Validation Place in the suburb of Middleton, Christchurch

Validation Place in Middleton – Still nothing on library website either the old or new and I originally walked this street in March 2019 and I wasn’t doing the research on Papers Past back then. This is what I wrote then – Marylands Place in Middleton was not on the library website so I have no idea how it got the name. This is an industrial / business area so I was surprised to see three houses amongst the businesses.

Note this street was renamed Validation Place recently because the survivors of abuse at the Marylands Home objected to the street name of Marylands Place.

Papers Past in July 1980 said that the northern portion of Torrens Road between the Southern motorway and Halls Road to be renamed Marylands Place. In 1981 there was a business advertising the change of address from Torrens Road to Marylands Place owing to the new motorway. In the 1980s there were lots of ads for businesses plus a few fires including arson in a derelict house. There were still a few people living in the street but not many. There were several articles about Marylands school being taken over by the state. The state had purchased the land here and rebuilt the original home / school after a fire. The school was run by The Hospitaller of St John of God but they requested that the state take it over. In 1984 the school was renamed Hogben School and I remember that as when I worked at Addington ANZ the boys from the school used to come in to do banking. The boys lived in at the school and were from all over New Zealand.

In 1988 a new IHC workshop / adult vocational opened on this street. Some of the headlines about the school weren’t very nice as the word retarded was frequently used. There was an article in 1987 about a 16 year old boy having a vasectomy and he wasn’t the first. These operations were at the request of the parents.

I had been geocaching in the area and decided to walk the street again because of the name change. There is still one house here but it isn’t on the valuation website so it probably now zoned industrial and being used by a business. The one house dating from 1960 that is on the valuation website has been recently demolished.