Kenwyn Avenue in the suburb of St Albans, Christchurch

Kenwyn Ave in St Albans – Named after Ken and Winston Nicholls, two sons of the developer. Formed on 5 acres of land off Mays Road owned by Percy Stanley Nicholls (d. 1974), a land agent.A Papanui war memorial street. First appears in street directories in 1950. Information supplied in 2006 by Eileen Thomson in an interview with Margaret Harper.

A small amount of information from the library website. I am curious as to why it is Kenwyn and not Kenwin if it is named after his sons. Note there is a place in Cornwall called Kenwyn.

Several entries on Papers Past and in 1948 there was an article about the bus service. From 1950 onwards most of the entries were about the best garden awards. There wee ads for a company called Beatty and Beatty who were an asphalt and concrete business. I was a bit worried about the street’s cooks as there were several oven fires in the 1950s. A few death notices and in 1980s they used to hold a street party every December. In 1953 the street was amalgamated with the city. This street is one of the Papanui Memorial Avenues and there is a plaque hanging from a lamp post on this street. There is no mention in Papers Past about this but it is briefly mentioned on a website about the Memorial Avenues. Trees were planted on the street as part of it being a Memorial Avenue.

The houses here date from 1920 to 2024 which surprised me as the street was supposed to have been developed in 1950. Nearly one third of the houses were built before 1950. I looked at older maps and it is on the map for 1950. Part of the street is on the maps for 1930 and 1941 and it looks like it was part of Mays Rd.

It is a pleasant looking street and many of the older houses are looking lovely. There is a walkway at the end of the street plus a reserve called Rutland Reserve where there is a playground. Outside one house there were free items and I took the books and the Halloween items. I will leave the books at a book exchange and turn the Halloween items into geocaches.

Edited to say that Percy Nicholls as well as being a real estate agent he was a tenor who was in an opera company in the 1920s. He also wrote music and one of his pieces was called Menin Gate Vision.