Main Road in Redcliffs, Clifton, Mt Pleasant and Moncks Bay – A continuation of Ferry Road after Ferrymead Bridge through to Sumner. First appears in street directories in 1910.
A tiny amount of information from the library website. I ended up looking at several older maps for this street. In earlier maps the road from the Ferry Road Bridge to The Causeway was called Christchurch and Sumner Road. The Main Road was mostly just in Redcliffs and from Redcliffs to Sumner much of it was called the Sumner Causeway. When looking at Papers Past most entries for Main Road were ads and death notices. Starting at the Sumner end there is Peacock’s Gallop and this was mentioned as early as 1886 when there was a slip on the road known as Peacock’s Gallop and the workmen soon cleared the obstruction. In 1905 the Hon J T Peacock said to the Tramway Board that he was in favour of widening the road the went under the Sumner cliffs. He then stated that he used to gallop along that part of the road in order to get over it as fast as possible and that it used to be known as Peacock’s Gallop. This was in reply to the Tramway Board who said that some 7 million passengers had been carried on the trams over Peacock’s Gallop during the last 16 to 17 years and that there had only been one disruption due to falling rocks. In 1915 the construction of the Sumner Causeway was started and this causeway was for trams to run from Shag Rock corner to the viaduct. In 1916 the new Sumner Causeway was opened and this ran between Shag Rock corner and the Tram Bridge and this removed the headland danger. The viaduct and Tram Bridge would have been other names for the McCormacks Bay Causeway. In 1928 there was opposition to the forming of a road next to the tramway at the front of the Sumner cliffs. There was very little mention of the part of the road that went from The Causeway to Ferry Rd. Redcliffs School was opened in1907. The Redcliffs Methodist Church was opened in 1926 and the new Presbyterian Church was opened in 1927. St Andrews Mission Church was also mentioned. The library was mentioned as early as the 1920s. Several sections were available in 1913. In 1959 there were moa hunter traces found in the garden of a house. This road seemed to have a lot of accidents especially ones where cars ended up in the estuary.
The houses here cover every decade from 1905 to 2023 with most built in 1970s and 1980s. Too many styles to describe ranging from boring to fairly quirky.
I took the bus to Sumner so that I could walk this road. The road starts by the Sumner Surf Life Saving Club and there is a walkway that I could follow. There is the estuary on one side and a cliff face on the other side. The cliff face is where Peacock’s Gallop was and I remember when there was a nice grassy reserve here. This would have been where the original trams used to run. It is now covered with rocks from the cliffs which fell during the earthquakes. Then you come to the Christchurch Yacht Club by the estuary side with a few houses on the other side. From the yacht club onwards it is mostly houses until you come to the shops. On the other side there were houses plus Barnett Park. The supermarket is now closed. I managed to resist popping into the library where they were having a book sale. A few more shops before there are more houses. On the other side there were a few houses including a big house that is called Brigadoon. It used to have the most wonderful garden decorations but they are no longer there. There is a large empty section where the school used to be. The school is now on the other side of the road. Just before you get to the Moa Cave there used to be a bright yellow house but it was destroyed in the earthquakes. The original owner of this house used to hold charity functions in the cave on his property and he was kind enough to show a group of us around the cave. I then walked across the Causeway to rejoin the Main Road. From this part of the road the estuary is on one side with a mixture of cliffs and houses on the other side. It is then Scott Park and the Mt Pleasant Yacht Club just before you reach the Ferry Road Bridge. The cob cottage now has a permanent cover over it and the cottage looks very sad. I found an article from 2018 that said that the cottage will be repaired. This obviously hasn’t happened and it looks worse now than what it did after the earthquakes. One interesting item that I came across when reading Papers Past was that a local group wanted a causeway to be built from Shag Rock to the Southshore Spit. This obviously didn’t happen.
When I was at High School I used to occasionally stay with a friend who lived on this road. The house that she lived in was originally a shop before it became a private house. After the earthquakes it was eventually demolished and a new house built. When I was a teenager I also knew a few other teenagers who lived on this road.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 