Waimakariri Rd in the suburb of Harewood, Christchurch

Waimakariri Rd in Harewood – formerly Part of Johns Road. Named because at one time the whole of Johns Road was known as the Waimak Road. First appears in street directories in 1972. [Kilcroft Road was another name suggested.]

A small amount of information from the library website. I didn’t find the name Kilcroft on Papers Past. The earliest entry that I found for Waimakariri Rd was in 1916 under Roll of Honour. Waimak Rd was mostly only used in the 1920s. The was land for sale in 1926 and described as suitable for market gardening. More land was available in 1956. Lots of ads for selling potatoes. Some entries said Harewood and other entries said Belfast or Styx. I will have to have another look at the older maps as the one from 1974 shows it very clearly as Waimakariri Rd and Johns Rd finishing at Sawyers Arms Rd. Map from 1922 shows it all as one road but modern maps show Johns Rd as extending past Sawyers Arms Rd. There seems to have been a reasonable amount of road changes in the area over the years.

I walked this street today after geocaching in the area and I was surprised to find that I had a footpath to be able to walk on. It was actually a really pleasant walk. Not many houses here and they all sit on large tracts of land. Most seem to have been built in the 1960s but one dates from 1915. There is apparently superior airport parking here but when walking past I actually thought that the property had originally been a domain because that was what it looked. One property looked like it was growing Christmas trees. Another old property I couldn’t see very well because of the vegetation surrounding it but it looked like an old workers cottage. At the Sawyers Arms Rd end the fences surrounding the properties were extremely tall. My best guess for the reason for such fences is for blocking traffic noise. I was surprised to see very little sign of boy racers as I would have thought that it would have been a prime target for such idiots. At one part the map looked there was another road leading off this road but it was just the entrance way to a car distribution business.