Akela Street in the suburb of Merivale, Christchurch

Akela Street in Merivale – Formerly Milsom Street. Named after Joseph Milsom (1820-1902). Re-named Akela Street. Named after Nellie Christensen (1927-1947), an Akela (cub leader). Milsom was a St Albans borough councillor elected 1885. Milsom Street first appears in street directories in 1896. Re-named Akela Street on 1 September 1948 when 120 streets were re-named. Nellie Christensen, an office worker of 27 Chapel Street, Christchurch, belonged to the Merivale Scout Group, which had its Scout Den in this street. She died in the Ballantyne’s fire of 1947.

A small amount of information from the library website. I attempted to research Joseph Milsom but it got rather confusing as there were several men with the same name. I expected to find an obituary on Papers Past but nothing. He owned a business that was called J Milsom and Co and was a soda water manufacturer. In 1871 it was renamed Xrated Water Company and that he would be running the business on his own account and no longer had any connection with Henry Joseph Milsom. I thoroughly checked the Ancestry website and couldn’t work out their relationship but both were born in Devizes. Going by the various family trees they had different parents. Joseph lived on Aikmans Rd and I suspect that this street was developed on his land after he died in 1902 but couldn’t find the information to back up my theory. All the entries on Papers Past for Nellie Christensen only mention the Ballantyne’s fire. I was actually at the Ballantynes Memorial in the weekend getting answers for a multi geocache. I realised afterwards that I didn’t need to visit the memorial as I had photos of it thanks to my love of plaques and memorials.

Under Milsom Street there were very few entries apart from a couple of death notices and lots of ads. There was possibly a Milsom Street in Sydenham. There were two entries about the street name change as in July 1948 the street name was going to be Baden-Powell Street but in August 1948 it was to be Akela Street. No explanation for either name change.

Considering the name change was connected to the scouts it was surprising that there wasn’t more entries about the scout hall on Papers Past. In 1954 the play centre was broken into and vandalised and the toys destroyed. Looks like the play centre shared the scout hall with the scouts. In 1959 the scouts started raising funds to build a new hall as the old hall was in an old house that had been condemned. The new hall opened in 1962. The Merivale Scout group merged with the Fendalton scout group in 1998 and the hall on Akela Street was sold.

Most of the entries on Papers Past from the 1980s onwards were complaints about traffic and parking because of the Merivale Mall. I couldn’t find the exact date that the Mall was opened but there were lots of protests in 1978 about the proposal to build the Mall. One side of the street is next to the Merivale Mall car park and I couldn’t find out the date of when the car park was extended but it was probably around the year 2000 as that is just after the scout hall was sold.

The street now has parking limited to 120 minutes. I was surprised that the valuation websites only had one house on this street as when you walk the street it looks like there are several buildings here. I checked google maps and these buildings all had addresses on the surrounding streets but had entrances and garages on Akela Street. Google maps also didn’t show street view earlier than 2012 which was annoying as I thought that there was an agreement to keep street view from before the earthquakes. I had an appointment at Breastcare at St Georges Hospital today so decided to walk a few streets after my appointment. Don’t panic there is nothing wrong with me and because I am in the At Risk Screening I have to go to Breastcare at St Georges Hospital.

I thought that I had taken a photo of a building on this street but the address of it was on another street so I took a screenshot from street view of the only building with an address on this street.