Arlington Street in the suburb of Burnside, Christchurch

Arlington Street in Burnside – In a subdivision by Maurice F. Carter Ltd. First appears in street directories in 1962. Information supplied in 2008 by Maurice Carter (d. 2011) in an interview with Margaret Harper.

A small amount of information from the library website and the forming of this street wasn’t as simple as this. There was at least three if not four separate subdivisions that created this street. All the subdivisions seemed to be properties on Memorial Ave and Arlington St was created in the middle of the properties. There was at least four properties on Memorial Ave between Grahams Rd and Woodridge Rd ( Roydvale Ave) that were sold off and subdivided. The ads have properties for sale on both Memorial Ave and Arlington St. There was the Memorial Ave subdivision ( Maurice Carter), Parkvue subdivision, Sunnyridge subdivision and there were also subdivisions for the other side of the street. Many ads on Papers Past and some have maps of the sections. Because of these subdivisions I suspect that houses on Memorial Ave would have been renumbered at this stage. This was a very busy place in the 1960s and 1970s with all the houses being built. The older houses are at the Kendal Ave end of the street and most built in 1960s. In 1966 and 1967 there was talk about extending the street to Grahams Rd but that obviously didn’t happen. The street runs from Kendal Ave to Witbrock Crescent. The street possibly ended at Ashbourne St until 1990s. At the Witbrock Crescent and Ashbourne St end of Arlington St the houses all date from 1990s plus a couple of more recent houses. There is a house here from 1940 and it is highly likely that the land from this property was subdivided in the 1990s. In 1971 there was much discussion about the number of accidents at the intersection of Burnside Crescent, Kendal Ave and Arlington St mostly caused by cars turning right. There is also a shopping centre on that corner.

My first thought was that this street was named after a place in the US but it is named after Arlington in Devon. There are so many different styles of houses here and even what I am now calling Maurice Carter style weren’t obvious. Many of the older houses have been updated. There was one I liked and it would have been a Maurice Carter design but had been painted white with bright blue windowsills plus the gates were the same bright blue. The 1940s house had a well established garden with tall trees so I couldn’t gawk at it as much as I would have liked. There is a walkway through to Memorial Ave next to this house. I did wonder if this was the original house owned by Mabel Witbrock and the date of the subdivision would fit in with her selling a property.