Carey St in Somerfield – Named in 1941, when the tender of Mr J. L. Gant for the building of eight blocks of cottage homes for aged persons, comprising 32 units, was accepted by the Christchurch City Council. The cottages were to be on property in Dunn Street where a new street was to be constructed named Carey Street. First appears in street directories in 1943. No residents are listed.
A reasonable amount of information from the library website. The street was probably named after a government official but I couldn’t find out who it was named after.
Papers Past had a large number of death notices for this street but considering it was for pensioners this isn’t surprising. There was a brief article about an elderly woman who was found dead in one of the units. In 1984 there was several articles about the units being revamped. Then in 1985 the articles were about them no longer getting revamped because of Government funding being cut. More recent articles were about the units being uneconomic to repair and that the Carey St Social Housing was closed. As late as 2023 there was talk about affordable housing being built on the street but no one seemed to be able to work out the best way of doing this.
When I walked this street today the old units have obviously been demolished and there are new units being built. When I looked at street view the old units were on big sections. There were originally 32 units on this land and I imagine that they will probably build double that number.
When looking at Papers Past I kept finding articles about a horse called Carey Street. I also found out that in the UK / England the term on Carey Street was frequently used for someone who was bankrupt. This was because the bankruptcy court was on Carey Street in London.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 