Symes Road in Wigram – First appears in street directories in 1957. A tiny amount of information from the library website. The street has been around a lot longer than the 1950s. In the 1920s it was known as Syme’s Rd but I couldn’t find out who Syme was and it was a fairly common surname. From 1930s onwards the apostrophe has disappeared. In 1930 there was a property for sale belonging to A E Collins. In 1944 a racehorse owner Bob Franks was selling his property. In 1960 the new overbridge is built and in 1961 there was flooding and this bridge was blamed. The residents said that the earthworks involved in building the bridge meant that water was directed towards their houses. The council and the drainage board blamed each other but in 1962 there was work to fix the problem.
This was a busy road when the Lady Wigram race was held as one of the entrances was on this street. It would have been noisy being so close to the track as I lived in Hoon Hay those days and I could hear the cars at my place. I was geocaching in the area today and it was only light rain at the time so went for a short walk. The street starts at Vickerys Rd and at this end is Vickerys Reserve and playground. On the same side of the street there are several businesses. The houses on the other side side of the street date from 1930 through to 2020. One of the older houses had a garage built right in front of it so that you couldn’t it properly but it looked almost like a 1920s wooden villa. Another house at the Haytons Rd end was a mess and looks like a hoarder lives there. Personally I wouldn’t like to live here but some of the houses looked OK.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 