Darley Street in the suburb of Somerfield, Christchurch

Darley St in Somerfield – Named in 1931 at the suggestion of the trustees in the estate of J. L. Scott. First appears in street directories in 1936.

A tiny amount of information from the library website. J L Scott was John Lee Scott and he had an iron foundry Scott Bros with his brother George. J L Scott died in 1913 but his widow didn’t die until 1925. It would have been after her death that the road was formed. Darley was a bit confusing at first as the only Darley that I could find was in Yorkshire and J L Scott was from Derbyshire. Darley in Derbyshire is now known as Darley Dale. I only briefly looked at J L Scott as he sounded like a nice respectable man with no scandals in his life which was unusual for many of our early settlers who have streets named after them.

I was geocaching in the area today and this is a pleasant tree lined street with some lovely houses. More than half the houses here date from the 1930s. Papers Past had many entries relating to beautiful street awards. Several death notices. Many of the ads for houses say that the suburb is Lower Cashmere which is fairly common for this area. In 1931 there was an entry to say that the new proposed street between Barrington St and Tainui St to be named Darley St. People obviously got confused as there was an entry in 1936 that mentioned the confusion and that Darley St and Tainui St were not clearly defined. The article stated that Tainui St runs off Somerfield St. Darley St runs off Barrington St to the new portion of Tainui St. The part of Tainui St that used to run off Barrington St to be renamed Moana St. I need to look at old maps just to satisfy my curiosity plus I like old maps. Edited to say that I did look at old maps and one from 1930 had the street as Scott St which would have been very confusing as there was already a Scott St only a few blocks away. That Scott St was named after the J L Scott and his brother.