Craven Street in Sockburn- formerly part of Middle Park Road (later Middlepark Road).Named after the Craven Plate, a horse race run at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. Named because of its proximity to the Riccarton Racecourse. First appears in street directories in 1934.
A small amount of information from the library website.
Edited as I found that there was a race at Addington called Craven Handicap Race so it is possible that the street is actually named after the Addington race or the person who the race is named after.
I didn’t find anything on Papers Past about the name change. There seemed to be a lot of accidents in this area and it is probably because of how close it is to the Main South Rd. There was one sad case in 1959 where an elderly man died from accidently drinking detergent. In 1961 a new college called College of St Thomas was opened. The main entrance is now on Middlepark Rd but there is a footpath leading to the school on Craven St.
One family had a bad year in 1957 as their house was damaged by arson and a couple of months later their daughter fall from a racehorse. There was possibly only a couple of families living here until the 1940s but most of the houses were built from 1960s onwards. One of the landowners was George Murray-Aynsley a horse breeder who died in 1949. There was also a racehorse owner and trainer E J Jennings who lived here until at least 1970 when he then moved out to Weedons. The houses didn’t stand out for me apart from the two dating from 1910. The street now has a cycleway which is apparently part of something called South Express cycleway.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 