Hassals Lane in the suburb of Waltham, Christchurch

Hassals Lane in Waltham – Named after Thomas Maberly Hassal (1834- 1879). Hassal lived at The Oaks in Opawa. First appears in street directories in 1892.A small amount of information from the library website and this street is now considered to be in Waltham rather than Opawa. Very little information on Papers Past. A couple of ads for someone selling a car and someone looking for a servant. It sounds like the house The Oaks was demolished in early 1960s and probably was between York St and Ensors Rd. In June 1961 there was a letter to the editor from N E Avery pointing out the mistakes in the report about the demolition. I couldn’t find this report but it must have claimed that Joseph Martin Heywood owned the house. N E Avery’s mother was born in the house and was the third child of Thomas Hassal. After Thomas Hassal died the trustee of the estate was Joseph Heywood on behalf of the Hassal family. This was very common especially if the person who inherited property was a woman. Thomas died in October 1879 of rheumatic fever and he was only 45 years of age. His widow would have been young with a young family which is why a trustee would have been appointed. The letter also said that Thomas Hassal purchased the house from a French family. The previous owner was a member of the Le Fleming family who were from England and one of those came over with William the Conqueror families. The house was let in 1880 and then again in 1900 on a long term lease. Frank Egan leased the house from 1901 but I am not sure who owned the house by this stage as Allan McLean seemed to eventually have a connection to the house. I walked this street on either Friday or Saturday. Just checked photos and I walked it on Friday. That is the trouble when you walk a lot of streets in the same area over a two day period. The street runs from Wilsons Rd to just past York St. Going by google maps there is a walkway that takes you all the way to Ensors Rd but this has been blocked off. Not many houses on this street with a couple from each decade of 1960, 1970 and 1980. A couple of ugly ones from 2015. The place that I liked wasn’t because of the house but because of the garden. The artwork in the garden was fantastic and I had a lovely chat with the owner. At the end of the street where I came to a dead end because of the walkway being closed off there was a sign saying Seven Oaks School. Slightly confusing as this school is out in Halswell. Apparently the school leased the property until the school in Halswell was built. There is another school on the property called Te Kura Kaupapa Maori O Waitaha but I couldn’t tell if it is open or still being renovated. On the same grounds there is supposed to be a Free Theatre but I thought this group were in the Art Centre. The Free Theatre called themselves Waldheim at Seven Oaks and their website said that Waldheim is the Germanic version of Waltham and means home in the woods. When I googled Waltham it only gave me some place in the US and gave the same meaning that the Free Theatre had on their website. The UK Waltham is in Lincolnshire and is much older than the one in the US. Waltham in the UK said that Waltham is an Anglo Saxon word and Walt means woodland and ham means village. They also gave an alternative origin of the word and is possibly from the old English word of Wealdhant. It was an interesting street even if the houses didn’t do much for me.