Major Aitken Drive in the suburb of Huntsbury, Christchurch

Major Aitken Drive in Huntsbury – Named after Major (later Doctor) William (known as Peter) Aitken (d. 1959) Aitken was the commanding officer of the Cashmere Military Sanatorium from 1 June 1920-June 1922. This took the form of shelters high on the open hillside above Cashmere Sanatorium. Named in 1993. First appears in street directories in 1996.

A small amount of information from the library website and because of two mistakes in their information it took me longer to research than it should have. Major Aitken was William Aitken and his son and his father were Peter Aitken. He also died in 1958 and found his obituary in December 1958. Major Aitken was born in Dunedin and educated at Otago Boys High School. He graduated from Otago Medical School in 1914 and he served in the NZ Medical Corps. Received Military Cross for Gallantry and reached the rank of lieutenant Colonel. He was superintendent of Military Sanatorium between 1919 and 1925. He then went into private practice specialising in chest complaints. He died at his home on Dyers Pass Rd. He retired in 1949 due to ill health. His wife Annie was assistant matron at Gisborne hospital and did military training at Wellington Hospital. She was amongst the nurses who went to the war on the ship HMHS Marama. She received the British War Medal and the Victoria Medal.

Most houses on this street were built in 1990s and 2000s with one built in 1980 plus a few newer places. This was a long and steep street that I walked on Friday as I was geocaching on this street. So many little streets and lanes run off this street. For a long street there is only 56 houses here but many are fairly large. I liked several of them but there was the usual ugly modern houses here as well. I walked down the street and then walked back to my car via Coronation Reserve and there is an entrance to the reserve from this street. It wasn’t the safest street to walk and the reason was that for much of the street there was a footpath on only one side of the street. You would be walking on the footpath and it would come to an end and the footpath would then be on the other side of the street. The trouble was that this would happen on a very sharp bend and you would then have to cross the street on a blind corner.