Tomes Road in St Albans – Named after Thomas Bennett Tomes (1821?- 1875). Tomes, a grazier, bought Rural Section 276, 50 acres in Papanui Road. His daughter, Emma, married John Stanley Monck (1845- 1929). A Papanui war memorial street. First mentioned in the Star in 1882 and first appears in street directories in 1892.
A small amount of information from the library website. Thomas Bennett Tomes died in September 1875 at Scotstown aged 54. His wife died October 1875. I found another Thomas Bennett Tomes who died in 1945 and he was the grandson of the other Thomas Bennett Tomes. The ancestry website’s family trees weren’t much help as they had too many mistakes. Several had Thomas living in the UK in 1881 which was a few years after he had died.
The earliest entry that I found in Papers Past was in 1887 and in 1888 there were complaints about the state of the road. I found the street name spelt as Tome’s Rd and Tomes’ Rd and possibly Toome’s Rd. In 1895 there was a bakehouse for let. In 1898 the Avon Road Board received correspondence asking if they were planning to rename the street. They replied that as it was one of the first streets in the area that they wouldn’t be renaming the street. There were sections for sale in 1898. In the 1910s it was mostly war information. In 1924 there was an application from residents concerned for the permission to lay out the new road which would be an extension of Tomes Rd. In 1925 there were sections for sale in the Tomes Rd extension. From 1930s onwards there were many entries about the best gardens competitions. The 1950s saw articles about Rutland St to be extended to Tomes Rd. A few complaints about this extensions not being done in time for the opening of Paparoa St School. There was a back entrance to the school om Tomes Rd. The extension was finally finished in 1961. There was a massage parlour on the street in 1976 and the owner claimed that her staff weren’t doing extras for the clients. I recognised a couple of surnames connected to this street and in 1975 I recognised a Lyttelton name. Hugh Collett got engaged to a girl who lived on this street. We used to travel in the same train carriage when going to high school.
I walked this street on Tuesday afternoon and made the mistake of doing this at the end of the school day. The street was full of parked cars from the parents and some were badly parked. Don’t get me started about cyclists on the footpath. The houses covered every decades from 1920 to 2024. Most houses were built in the 1920s, 1970s and 1990s. There was a wide variety of styles and there were some lovely older houses. I started my walk at the Rutland St end where there is the Rutland Reserve. Next to the reserve there is the Paparoa Primary School. It was a pleasant tree lined street but the school parking puts me off. I managed to get a couple of photos of houses that were a bit quirky. The war memorial street plaque was at the Papanui Rd end of the street.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 