Birch Street in the suburb of Bexley Red Zone, Christchurch

Birch Street in Bexley Red Zone – First mentioned in The Press in 1912 when a “cheap building site” is advertised for sale there. First appears in street directories in 1918.

A small amount of information from the library website and I found the same ad from 1912. The owner of the land was leaving the Dominion. Lots of entries on Papers Past and in 1923 the road was metalled. There were sections available in 1956 and in 1959 there was discussion about the zoning of the land in this area. Some wanted it to be zoned residential and others wanted it to be zoned industrial. Being an older street there were several death notices. Between 1975 and 1985 there was a lot of discussion about this area. The residents objected to the plan of a car park being built behind their houses. The car park was to be for an employment zone. The development was also called a Garden Industrial area that would be separated from the houses on this street by a playing field. The original plan for this land was for Housing Corp houses and it was to be called Kirklands after Norman Kirk. A change of government and the discussion is about an employment zone ie industries. Eventually the land behind Birch St was sold to developers and it took several years to get consent and more than one developer before houses were built there. In the 1980s the Burwood / Woolston Express is mentioned and some properties on Birch St were purchased by the government so that the Express Way could be built. Another street was occasionally mentioned in connection with Birch St but Everton St seems to have disappeared and most likely this happened because of the Express Way. The Burwood / Woolston Express Way is probably what we know as Anzac Drive.

Street view from 2007 show a street with houses from various decades especially the 1960s. There was at least one older cottage and an art deco house. When I was walking back to my car along a wee footpath that I had found at the end of Bexley Rd I came across a walkway into Birch St from the walkway beside Anzac Drive. Looking at street view from 2007 there were two little walkways into the street from Anzac Drive and the wee walkway that I had been walking along had been a nice wide walkway / cycleway.