Langdons Road in Papanui and Northcote – Named after Thomas Langdon (1832?-1904). Langdon was at first a farmer and later a butcher. Langdon and “his road” are first mentioned in the Star in 1872 in a report of a meeting of the Avon Road Board. He is a resident of Langdons Road in 1887, the year it first appears in street directories. On 24 May 1926 there was an attempt by the council to re-name the street Lambeth Street. The Papanui Progress League protested against this, saying residents “feel it to be a slight on the family who have resided for many years in the district”. Langdons Road was linked up to Bishops Road (later Greers Road) in 1955 when the first state houses were built there.
A reasonable amount of information from the library website. There were several articles in Papers Past about his death. They all say that Thomas Langdon of Langdon and Steel Butchers dropped dead on the footpath opposite his residence in Papanui. He had been suffering from heart disease. His obituary said that he had started walking along Chapel Street towards Harewood Rd and when opposite the Wesleyan Church he fell down and died. He had arrived in NZ in 1858. As usual the family trees on Ancestry website were full of mistakes. A couple had him still alive in 1911 and they had obviously got confused with all the other men with the same name. The silly thing is that they had noted his death in 1904 on their family trees.
There was a huge amount of information on Papers Past and I eventually stopped looking at ads as there were thousands of them. The earliest entries that I found were in 1871 when a bridge was completed plus a Mr Ladbrook was forbidden to trespass on the street. Apparently he kept cutting ditches into the road to clear water from his property and flooding the street. I forgot to have another search for Frederick and Catherine Cooper as the newspapers wrongly claimed that Frederick’s wife Catherine had died. In 1879 the creek and railway line near the Papanui Station was mentioned. The railway features a lot in news about this street and it was usually in connections with accidents between cars and trains. Lots of death notices over the years plus a few birth notices. So many ads and in the early days they related to the orchards but from the 1920s onwards the ads related to businesses on the road. Charles Sisson had an orchard and Mr F Cone had an orchard called Garden of Eden. Between 1911 and 1920 it was mostly information about the war. From the 1920s onwards the tennis club got several mentions. The bowling club also got several mentions until from moved from the Langdons Road site in 1970. In 1926 a new timber yard was opened called Imperial Timber Ltd and in 1927 a building at this business was destroyed by a fire. The Sanitarium Health Food Factory opened in 1921 and in 1966 there was a fire that gutted the factory. It was obviously rebuilt but was badly damaged in the earthquakes and the business was relocated to Auckland.
In 1930s there were complaints about the state of the road plus they were growing tobacco on a property as an experimental crop. In the 1940s the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was built where the Papanui Orchard and Gardens used to be. The Papanui RSA new rooms were at the corner of North Road and Langdons Road. The RSA moved in 1984 to a new site. Smith City Market Ltd opened up on the street.
The Education Dept started talking about building a new technical college here as early as 1922 and it was eventually built and opened in 1936. It was known as Papanui Technical College until 1955 when the Education Dept approved of the name change to Papanui High School. Weirdly my old paper map shows it as Papanui Technical College and I didn’t think that my map was that old. In 1952 the railway crossing got warning bells and the staff at the school complained about the bells as they apparently were a distraction to the pupils. This railway crossing needed warning bells as there were many accidents over the years including some fatal ones.
The first mention of State Housing was in 1951 and they were to be built on a block of orchard land. Mentioned again in 1953 as 19 State Houses to be built on Langdons Road on the Robertson Block. In 1954 the six shop sites on the corner of Morrison Ave and Langdons Road were all sold.
In 1958 a Mr James Cave of 188 Langdons Road lost control of his motorbike when the sidecar broke away. I couldn’t find this James Cave on the Ancestry website and I don’t believe that he is related to me.
In 1966 it was declared that the demand for a boys home was insufficient and it would be closed down. It had only been running for two years and only had two boys living there even though they had space for 24 boys. In the 1960s Papanui Shopping Centre and Northlands Shops were mentioned. The library was mentioned in 1969 by someone complaining about the look of it.
From 1950s onwards there seemed to be a huge increase in the numbers of accidents on this road plus the street seemed to feature frequently in the magistrates court.
When I was looking at street view to compare present day with pre earthquakes I discovered a huge block of what looked like paddocks or a park. Managed to found seven pages of information on the council website. The Northlink Shopping Centre was developed on unused industrial land in 2016 after the large block of land was rezoned. The old firestone factory would be demolished for further development on the land. The pedestrian access was adequate for that use. Personally as a pedestrian who walked past the large shopping centre I didn’t feel safe.
I walked this street on Wednesday as I wanted to visit the Cancer Society rooms which are now on this street. I remember them being on Manchester Street.
At the Greers Road end I nearly got hit by a car turning on a red arrow and yes I used the f word at the elderly woman driver. She hadn’t even noticed that there was a red arrow and when I say elderly she probably wasn’t much older than me. The State Houses are all this end of the street and some are looking very neglected. If you look at street view from just a few years ago they were looking very tidy. A couple had lawns that knee high with grass and makes my wildness area for flora and fauna look almost immaculate. Then from about Morrison Ave it is houses on one side of the street and shops and businesses on the other side. There are a couple of houses that date from 1910 but I couldn’t pick them out as they had been altered too much. None of the houses on this street stood out for me. It took me ages to walk past the entrances to the Northlink Shopping Centre because of the cars.
Eventually it is the school on one side and shops on the other side of the street. Cross the railway line and it is Northlands Mall. I did pop into the library. I did chat to a teacher at the school as it was dress up day at the school and it was fun looking at the ones who had bothered to dress up.
I visited the Cancer Society Centre and dropped off my books as I had decided that I didn’t need books about breast cancer any longer. It has been 21 years and I had celebrated with going out for breakfast. As a friend said it was Happy Being Alive Day for me.
I actually didn’t really like this street and didn’t feel overly safe walking it. It was mostly only one side of the street where I didn’t feel safe walking. I didn’t even take many photos which is unusual for what is a fairly long street. Also I object to a shared footpath with bikes when they already have a cycleway.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 