Keswick St in Woolston – Named after William Keswick (1835-1912). Keswick was a China based businessman and a British politician. He established a branch of Jardine Matheson & Co. in Japan in 1859. He was a trustee and executor of the will of Sir Harry Smith Parkes (1828- 1885), a diplomat in China who owned Rural Section 37, 50 acres in Opawa. The two families were related by marriage. In 1895 the executors sold Parkes’ land to the Liberal Government for a workers’ settlement, Roimata. Shown on a 1912 street map. First appears in street directories in 1924.
A reasonable amount of information from the library website and not a lot that I can add about the name of the street. There is no evidence that William Keswick ever visited New Zealand.
Papers Past mostly had ads plus birth and death notices. There was an article in 1907 about the decision to name the new street that is between Parke St and Richardson St as Keswick St. I was amused by an article in 1984 where one of William Keswick’s descendants claimed that she couldn’t pay a traffic fine. Her excuse was that she had taken a vow of poverty because she was now a novice nun. She was a heiress to millions.
This was a pleasant street with several lovely 1920s villas and one art deco house. There was even a modern house that I quite liked. I did assume when walking the street that it would have been named after Keswick in the Lake District but I was obviously wrong.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 