Grenville Street in the suburb of Waltham, Christchurch

Grenville St in Waltham – Formerly John Street. Named after William John Wilson (1858?-1895). Re-named Beresford Street and later re-named Grenville Street. William John Wilson was the eldest son of William Barbour Wilson (1819-1897), nurseryman, businessman and local politician and his wife, Elizabeth. He was a gentleman of Sydenham. He died in his 38th year at his father’s house, the Grove. In a subdivision of Rural Section 48, land owned by William Wilson (1819-1897). John Street appears on an 1874/75 Deposit Plan. First appears in street directories in 1892. Re-named Beresford Street in 1909. Re-named Grenville Street on 1 September 1948 when 120

streets were re-named.

A reasonable amount of information from the library website. There wasn’t much information on Papers Past about William J Wilson apart from his death notice.

In 1888 there were sections available for sale. The rest of the entries were birth and death notices. Many of the births were at Mrs Creagh’s Nursing Home and it is possible that seriously ill people were also nursed at her nursing home as there was at least one death notice connected to the home. I couldn’t find any reason for the name change to Beresford St but this name was being used from about 1912 onwards. There was also a Beresford St in Brighton. The name change in 1948 would have been because of Beresford St in Brighton.

There wasn’t anything on Papers Past for why the Grenville name was used and the best that I could figure out was that it was named after George Grenville who was Prime Minister of Great Britain in the 1760s. He had a connection to Lord Cobham and Lord Cobham had a Lord Lyttelton connection.

The houses date from 1915 to 2021 with most built in 1970s. There was supposed to be a house from 1880 but it seems to have been replaced by a modern building. I didn’t really like this street and many of the houses looked rundown. Some houses looked OK but the older houses looked very sad. There was one house from the 1920s that looked terrible. It had broken windows and the garden was very overgrown yet on street view from a year ago it was looking great.