Tompkins Lane in Burwood – Named after John Tompkins (1788?-1878). Tompkins, a tinplate worker, arrived on the Clontarf in 1858. He bought Rural Section 3099, 20 acres on the Horse-shoe Lagoon. In the 1873-1874 electoral roll his name is spelt Thompkins. Developed by Thornton Estates (2002) Ltd and formed at 148 Broomfield Terrace. Named in 2003.
A small amount of information from the library website. There are three houses dating from 1965 here plus one dating from 1950 and the rest are from 2000 onwards. My best guess is that the older houses are the original ones and were left standing when the street was developed. I searched Papers Past and ancestry website for the Tompkins/ Thompkins family. Both spellings were used for the family and I was amused to see that they had two entries in the electoral roll in 1865 under the two different spellings. The shipping records use the Thompkins name but the gravestones have the Tompkins spelling. John came out in 1859 on the Contarf with his wife Elizabeth and they were both in their 70s. They were married in Bristol in 1815 and they both died in Christchurch in1878 aged 90 and 92. Their son James was already in Christchurch and he came out in 1856 on the ship Joseph Fletcher along with his wife Emma and three children. Both John and James owned the land at Horseshoe Lake but both lived in the city on Lichfield St and Colombo St. The son James died in 1872 in his 50s. It took a bit of searching and many of the family trees on the ancestry website were so wrong. Most muddled up John and his son James. Had the wrong information about the marriages and also managed to have them living in England after they had come out to New Zealand. This information is so simple to check. A lot of information for a tiny street.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 