Cooks Lane in Heathcote – formerly Cook Street. Named after William Cook. Cook, a timber merchant, built the homes on Cooks Lane. He is listed living there in 1907, the year Cook Street first appears in street directories. Becomes Cooks Lane in 1936.
A small amount of information from the library website and I couldn’t find anything on Papers Past for Cooks Street in Heathcote. There was a very interesting boarding house on a Cooks Street that ran off Colombo Street.
The first entry that I could find for Cooks Lane was in 1939 under military service call up and it was for Francis Andrew Stechmann a farm labourer of 3 Cooks Lane. Francis was my Dad’s cousin and my memory of him is when he lived on Canterbury Street in Lyttelton.
In the 1940s there were a couple of ads plus a new name was proposed for the street but the name was undecided. It obviously didn’t happen. Nothing in the 1950s and just a few ads in the 1960s. In 1972 there was a discussion about the disposal of night soil. From 1983 onwards only the Heathcote Riding School is mentioned.
I seriously sidetracked with William Cook because of his will. William Cook was a busy man and had been a butcher with his brother. Owned property in Lyttelton, Governors Bay, Teddington as well as the property in Heathcote. William Cook died in 1917 aged 61 and there was a big court case regarding his will as he only left a weekly allowance of £2 and 5 shillings to his wife Annie. This not only was to support his wife but also seven children. Two of the children were working and paid board plus Annie had to work as a part time nurse. William and Annie separated in 1903 and she lived in a house on the corner of Exeter St and Oxford St in Lyttelton. Reason for the separation was William’s relationship another woman. This woman was the wife of Annie’s brother and William was living with Annie’s brother Richard and Richard’s wife. William left most of his money to Richard’s wife and her children plus money to another woman and her children. The courts agreed to increase the weekly allowance to Annie. I didn’t read all of the will online as there were over 100 pages to it but I read enough to see that he had left most of his money to the two other women and their children. There could be two or three Lyttelton families who could get a surprise if they get their DNA done. Edited to say that Alice the wife of Richard Wakelin was living at William Cook’s property on Cooks Lane while Richard was living in Governors Bay. The widow of William’s brother Colin said that the business partnership between William and Colin was dissolved because of William’s relationship with Alice Wakelin. There was a child born in 1904 who was adopted by Alice Wakelin and William left this child a fairly large sum of money.
Most of the houses in this street were built in 2005 and later but there are two houses from 1910 and I managed to get a photo of one of them. The other one was hidden by lots of trees. There is a walkway here that leads to Ferrymead Reserve. There was a large green space that looked like it could have been a community garden but there wasn’t any signs. I checked google maps and it is possibly a private section.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 