Templar Street in the suburb of Richmond, Christchurch

Templar Street in Richmond – formerly Templer Street. Named after John Arthur Templer (1817-1885). Templer bought 73 River Road in 1876, a large estate of 100 acres. Templer Street first appears in street directories in 1887. Made a public street from 1 January 1888. Becomes Templar Street in street directories in 1917.

A small amount of information from the library website. I couldn’t find out why they changed the spelling of the street name. A map from 1912 had the Templar spelling. Not a huge amount of information on Papers Past and until 1904 there was also a Templer/Templar St in Sydenham. The earliest mention that I found for the street was when flowers were stolen in 1885. Several death notices. A house was destroyed by a fire in 1890. Several entries between 1909 and 1913 about a pumping station to be built. I did find a wedding notice in 1922 that related to my Barrett family tree. The death notice for John Arthur Templer was very brief and just said that he died at his residence aged 68 and was late of Narrambla, NSW. John Arthur Templer emigrated to Australia with his brother Edward Merson Templer in February 1940 in the barque Hope. They purchased a mill which was renamed Templer’s Mill. They operated the mill until 1870 when they went bankrupt so they sold up and moved to New Zealand. This information from an ancestry page claims that the house that they built is still standing but this is unlikely as it would have been in the red zone. There is a photo of John Arthur Templer’s grave on findagrave. At least one member of this family moved to Orari and Geraldine. One claim to fame is that John and Edward’s nephew was Andrew Barton Paterson AKA Banjo Paterson.

I had time to be able to walk a couple of streets before visiting Bill Sutton’s house as part of the Heritage Festival. The house was built in 1963 and is the only house left standing on this street. It was apparently quite a battle to prevent this house from being demolished. Looking at google street view from before the earthquakes it looks like it was a very pleasant street.