Maunsell Street in the suburb of Woolston, Christchurch

Maunsell St in Woolston – Named after Charles Thomas Maunsell (d.1859) Maunsell, an original subscriber of the Canterbury Association, bought Rural Section 14, 100 acres between Ferry

Road and Heathcote, and Rural Section 67, 50 acres in Heathcote, near Christchurch Quay. He arrived in Lyttelton on the Castle Eden in February 1851 and lived at what the Godleys called Singleton Lodge in Lyttelton. He became the first treasurer of the Canterbury Jockey Club. He returned to England and died in Limerick, Ireland, leaving money for the establishment of a Provincial Hospital. When this was built a ward was named after him. First mentioned in The Press in 1880 when land is advertised for sale there. First appears in street directories in 1892.

A reasonable amount of information from the library website. There wasn’t any information on Papers Past about Charles Thomas Maunsell which surprised me. The ancestry website didn’t have much information about him either but the records say that he lived at Singleton House rather than Singleton Lodge. He actually returned home to Ireland rather than England. His father was Anglican Archdeacon for Limerick and Charles Thomas Maunsell died at his father’s house in Limerick. He was probably only 36 years old when he died as the various family trees say that he was born in 1823 but I couldn’t find the birth record. It is unlikely that he was married. His brother a few months after Charles died named his son after him.

Found the same ads for the sale of land in 1880. Not a lot of information on Papers Past but Mr Garland had a property on the street which he sols in 1914. The sewers were laid in 1930. Sewers were actually a big issue in Christchurch because of the city having been built on a swamp. Typhoid was a big problem in Christchurch. I was amused by an entry in 1929 about Mrs Terry having a hen that laid very big eggs. Lots of birth and death notices. The area was eventually industrial with a big industrial expansion in 1954.

I walked this street in the weekend and it runs from Garlands Rd and then becomes Cumnor Terrace. When the passenger trains were still running the Woolston Railway Station would have been at the Cumnor Terrace end. I wish that I could remember what the station looked like but it was in the 1960s and 1970s when I travelled on the school train. The street has a mixture of houses and businesses on it and the oldest house is from 1890 plus there are houses from 1905 and 1910. A few from 1940s and 1950s. There is a house called Bloomsbury that is on Heritage NZ list and it was hard to get a good view of it but it looked like it was a lovely house. A couple of the houses looked a bit rundown but most looked OK.