Curries Road in the suburbs of Hillsborough and Woolston, Christchurch

Curries Rd in Hillsborough and Woolston – formerly Gadds Road and Station Road. Formerly Station Road. Becomes Station Road and Gadds Road. Named after Elijah Gadd (1832?-1888). Re-named Curries Road. Named after Mrs Mary Currie, a resident in Station Road from 1892. Station Road first appears in street directories in 1892. From 1905-1928 it is listed as Station Road or Gadds Road (one entry). Gadd established the earliest Hillsborough brickworks and also built Christchurch’s first wooden town hall in 1859. He died in Sydney. Station Road or Gadds Road was re-named Curries Road in 1933 by the Public Utilities Committee of the Heathcote County Council. Gadd’s dates of birth and death supplied in 2007 by an Australian descendent, Christine Gadd, in an interview with Margaret Harper.

That is a reasonable amount of information from the library website. For further information I looked at Papers Past, Ancestry and Findagrave. The earliest mention that I could find on Papers Past was in 1900 for Gadds Rd and channelling was done in 1902. One more mention in 1919. After this date the street seemed to be known as Gadds Rd and Station Rd. In 1932 the name was changed from Station Rd to Curries Rd and reason was that there were too many Station Roads. I will agree with this as it was almost impossible to search for Station Rd as there were so many of them in Christchurch and there is still one in Heathcote.

There is a mistake in the library information as Elijah Gadd didn’t build Christchurch’s first wooden town Hall in 1859. He was a stone mason plus he didn’t arrive in New Zealand until 1862. What he did do is rebuild the Town Hall in stone in 1862 / 1863 but this building was destroyed by an earthquake in 1869. In 1866 he bought land in Hillsborough where he established a brickworks plus a large orchard and garden. He also was one of the first licensee of the Heathcote Valley Hotel and in 1877 his brickworks was available to be let. In 1876 and 1879 he applied for a license to run a pub in Hillsborough. I found an entry dated 1957 where his brick and stone two storey building on the corner of Curries Rd and Opawa Rd was to be demolished. This was where he planned on having his pub. In 1882 he returned to Australia. He had originally emigrated to Australia from Somerset before coming to New Zealand. I got a bit confused about his wife as I found a death notice for Sarah Ann Gadd in 1871 and she died aged 31 plus I found a death notice for Sarah Ann Gadd who died in 1854 aged 24. Ancestry and Findagrave helped here as he had two wives named Sarah Ann. Sadly both died not long after giving birth and the babies also died only a matter of weeks after their mothers had died.

I did have a chuckle to myself when I discovered the entry about Elijah Gladd being bankrupt in 1864. So many of our streets are named after men who had been bankrupted at some stage.

When the street was named Station Rd that would have been because there was a railway station here. Part of the station platform can still be seen from Cumnor Tce and I can’t remember what Woolston Station looked like. I should remember it as I went past it enough times in the late 1960s and early 1970s on the school train.

I couldn’t find much information about Mary Currie on Papers Past apart from her death notice. Ancestry had a bit more information and she did live on Station Rd. Mary died in 1905 aged 64 and her daughter Susan died in 1951 and Susan was still living in Curries Rd when she died. It gets a bit confusing about Mary’s husband William as I am not sure if he died in 1889 or 1928. I will have to visit Addington Cemetery where they are buried and the photos on Findagrave are hard to read. Pity as one of the photos on Findagrave shows the graves still standing so it is obviously pre earthquake. Mary and William’s son also named William died in 1928 so it is possible that the various family trees on Ancestry got confused between father and son. The electoral rolls only show William Junior living with Mary. Lots of entries for Curries Rd on Papers Past and Anderson’s Ltd was mentioned frequently. This road had lots of accidents and a couple involved cars hitting trains. In 1963 the Curries Road Community Centre was opened. I don’t know if this included a library but it was mentioned that they planned on including a library. There was also a bowling green. I don’t know if it was a separate park or at the same park but there was a whippet racing track on this street in 1953 and it was described as being at the new park called Whippet Park. The year 1963 seemed to be a busy year for this street in Papers Past as many of the residents were complaining about the noise from the scrap metal yard. In the 1980s the complaints were about the noise levels at Hillsborough Tavern. For one of the concerts at the tavern the council said they couldn’t do anything about the noise issues because both of the noise control officers were on holiday.

There were more houses on this street than I expected and most were built in the 1950s with a few built in the 1940s and 1990s. Most of the houses are at the Port Hills Rd end of the street and the businesses are near the railway lines. The park is now called Curries Reserve and there isn’t much at the park. There used to be a playground here and you can see it in the street view for 2008 but it was gone by 2012. The council in 2023 put out a tender for the Hillsborough Community Centre to be removed and the building is now no longer there. The houses here are typical 1950s style and some are in better condition than others. The houses from 1990s are on back sections. Edited to say that Mary’s husband died in 1928 aged 82 and this was 6 months after their son William had died. I have no idea who the other William Currie in Addington cemetery is as there isn’t a headstone for him