Circuit Street in Strowan – Named after Sophia Circuit Rhodes, née Latter, (1833- 1906). Sophia Rhodes was the daughter of merchant, Edward Circuit Latter (1829- 1896), wife of farmer and businessman Robert Heaton Rhodes (1815-1884), and mother of politician, philanthropist, farmer and landowner, Sir Robert Heaton Rhodes (1861-1956). It is referred to as a “new road” in the Sun in 1914. First appears in street directories in 1916.
A reasonable amount of information from the library website and nothing that I can add about the name of the street. The Rhodes family is well known enough that I don’t think that I need to research them. Papers Past has mostly social entries for the street and I found the same 1914 entry about it being a new street. There was a letter to the editor in 1927 complaining about street names and they included Circuit Street. The person obviously didn’t know the reason for the name. From the 1950s onwards there many entries for Elizabeth House and these were all for meetings and social events. I found an article from 1953 that mentions that the Empire Societies purchased the property of A K Firth for their headquarters and to be known as Elizabeth House. The Empire Societies were Royal Empire Society, Victoria League, Navy League and English Speaking Union. When A K Firth owned the house it was called Oakbrook. I googled Elizabeth House and it was gorgeous and it was built in 1914 and the architect was Samuel Hurst Seager. Sadly it was damaged in the earthquakes and demolished in 2011. There is now an ugly modern house on the site.
There are three houses from 1920s and a couple from 1940 and 1950 but most houses have been built in the last few years. The older houses are lovely but I didn’t particularly like the modern houses. The street runs from Heaton Street to the grounds of St Andrews College, I walked this street on Saturday and it was very busy with plague carriers AKA children because of sports at the college.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 