Chancellor Street in the suburb of Richmond, Christchurch

Chancellor Street in Richmond – Named after a position in the Anglican Church. The chancellor is the legal adviser to an Anglican diocese. He or she is one of those who administer the affairs of a diocese between meetings of synod. One of a number of streets with names with Anglican associations, chosen when the Church Property Trustees sold their land. First mentioned in The Press in 1910 when land for sale is advertised there. First appears in street directories in 1914.

A small amount of information from the library website. Papers Past had ads for sections in 1910 for the Church Property subdivision. In 1913 there were seven workers dwellings allotted to this street. In 1914 there was a Workers Dwelling for sale in the Chancellor Street Settlement. There were several sections for sale between 1913 and 1914. In 1915 there was a school to be built on the corner of Shirley Road and Chancellor Street. I then got a bit confused as there was a letter to the editor in 1928 with a question about using the site of the old Richmond school for a playground. I searched Papers Past and couldn’t find anything about Richmond school being on Chancellor Street. There were some birth notices and lots of deaths notices.

At the Shirley Road end of the street there is a playground called Shirley Community Reserve. The Shirley Primary school was on this site from 1916 to 1977. Then the Shirley Community Centre was here from 1979 to 2011. The Community Centre was damaged in the earthquakes. Near Julius Terrace there is a Play Centre. Also at the corner by Julius Terrace the road is closed and there is a footbridge over Dudley Creek connecting the one part of the street to the other part of the street. The street has only been closed at this point since 2016 and not everyone was happy about this. There are a couple of empty sections where houses have been demolished. Going by street view they looked like lovely 1920s houses but they were made from brick and many brick houses didn’t fare well in the earthquakes. Most of the houses on this street were built between 1910 and 1925. I managed to work out that the workers dwellings were near the Guild Street end of the street as they were all in an identical style. It was a pleasant street and there was one house that looked lovely but I am not sure if it a complete rebuild or just updated.