Cardiff Avenue in the suburb of Somerfield, Christchurch

Cardiff Ave in Somerfield and nothing on library website. This is a bit surprising as the street has been around since 1925. I looked at a map of Spreydon from 1912 and this map is very useful for this this area. There was one big section that went from Somerfield St to what is now Stenness Ave. Stenness Ave was in the same subdivision as Cardiff Ave. A reasonable amount of information on Papers Past. There were ads in 1925 for a subdivision which included new streets of Cardiff Ave and Stenness Ave. Most entries were for birth and death notices plus best street competitions. It was two engagement notices that jumped out at me. One engagement notice in 1973 was for Lorraine Hoskins getting engaged to Peter Lublow. That bought back some memories. The other engagement notice that caught my attention was from 1947 and it was for a Bernard William Smyth. I went googling to double check that it was the same person that I was remembering. I expected to have found Bernard Smyth’s obituary but Stuff’s revamp made this impossible. I also checked the Ancestry website to check electoral rolls. I did find Bernard Smyth’s father’s obituary on Papers Past. Bernard Smyth was a presenter on Town and Around for locals old enough to remember this show. He was also an author and I just checked the library website and they are only available to read at the library and can’t be borrowed. The various family trees on Ancestry website said that he lived and died in Lyttelton but that isn’t correct. After he retired he was living in Sumner but him and his wife are buried in a Lyttelton cemetery.

This was a pleasant street to walk with some lovely older houses. Most houses in the street were built in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the older houses now has a childcare business in it. I was amused by the garden decoration at one of the houses. I did go back to google maps and took a screenshot of the Smyth house which was a very ordinary looking 1930s house. It would have been a brand new modern house when the family moved there. I have been sidetracking yet again when looking for information about a street.