Desmond Street in the suburb of Merivale, Christchurch

Desmond Street in Merivale – Desmond is a first name popular with the Helmore family. Frederic Desmond Helmore (1882?- 1934) served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps, Mechanical Transport Section in World War I. John Desmond Helmore (1913-1988) was the father of Desmond W. Helmore (1940-) who wrote Drawings of New Zealand insects. This street was cut through land which was part of the Helmore Estate. Described as a “newlyformed” street in The Press in 1921. First appears in street directories in 1924.Information supplied in 1997 by Miss Skellerup of Desmond Street in an interview with Margaret Harper.

A reasonable amount of information from the library website and nothing that I can add about the name of the street. The author Desmond W Helmore is still alive and you can borrow his book at the library.

In 1921 it was described as a new street in the Millbrook subdivision. The entry on Papers Past also said that this street is where the original Helmore homestead is sited. This is interesting as the library information for Helmores Lane says that it is on Rhodes St. The surname that is mentioned the most on Papers Past for this street is the Skellerup name. Their house was called Danmark. In 1958 there was another subdivision called Avonbank and it was from the estate of the late George Gould. A sad entry was for a local solicitor Ken Neave who committed suicide in February 1931 just a couple of days after the Napier earthquake. He apparently mentioned the earthquake in his suicide note. He was also worried about the state of the world. In August 1930 there were two residents from this street who were on a ship called RMS Tahiti which sunk in the Pacific. Thankfully everyone was rescued but this ship was jinxed as it seemed to have had a few mishaps including hitting a ferry in Sydney Harbour killing 40 ferry passengers. In World War One it was a troop ship and more troops died from the ‘ Spanish Flu’ on this ship than any other troop ship. Note I prefer not to use the term Spanish flu but in this case the Wikipedia page used that term. Also it is easy for me to sidetrack when maritime history is involved.

I walked this street in the weekend and it is a lovely street but well beyond my budget. There are still houses here from the 1920s and 1960s subdivisions. Many of the post earthquake rebuilds are ugly and there is one that I thought was particularly ugly yet it has won awards. You can’t see the house from the street as it is on a back section but if you walk along the riverbank you can see it. I actually thought that it would be at risk of flooding and at the time didn’t realise that it was part of this street. They call the house Desmond House so I wondered if it was where the original Helmore family home was situated. I would need to look at old maps to confirm this.