Smarts Road in Hornby- Named after Samuel Smart (1822-1897). Smart was a roading contractor. First appears in street directories in 1960. Hornby streets are not listed separately until 1960.
A small amount of information from the library website. I wrote about Samuel Smart after walking either Smartlea Street or Milton Street so I won’t repeat myself. Samuel Smart is supposed to have introduced asphalt to New Zealand. When looking at Papers Past I found entries for a Smart’s Road in Sydenham and it sounded like it intersected with Colombo Street. I searched maps but couldn’t find any streets with that name. It would have to be one of the streets running off Bradford Park. This street was mentioned in 1875/ 1876 and one of the maps on the library is from these years. The Smarts Road in North Canterbury is named after a different family.
Couldn’t find much information on Papers Past about Smarts Pit and the exact dates that Samuel Smart closed the pit in Sydenham and opened the pit in Hornby. The first mention that I found for Smarts Road in Hornby was in 1929 and it was described as running parallel to the railway line. In was a Smarts Road Reserve mentioned in 1930 but I couldn’t tell if it was in Hornby or in Sydenham. There were obviously houses here in the 1930s as there was a resident hurt in an accident in 1933. There were a few death notices in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1959 the quarry / pit closed and it became a rubbish dump for the council. It was still called Smarts Pit. The rubbish dump closed in 1973 and it became Kyle Park. There is still a Kyle Park but on Smarts Road side of the park there is now the Hornby Library. The new Hornby Library opened in 2024. No wonder I was confused yesterday when walking to the library as I couldn’t remember the library being so far from Hornby Mall. The street was probably fully zoned as industrial land in 1972 and there are no longer any houses here. Most of the businesses seem to relate to the vehicle industry. At the Waterloo Road end there was an interesting small building covered in street art. The building belonged to the Order of the Orange Lodge. I couldn’t find out when the lodge moved to this street. I couldn’t find out the information online but did find a photo of the original lodge building and it wasn’t this building. I looked at street view to see what the library site looked like from before the library was built. It had been a lovely grassy area with trees. The lodge building looked similar but with different street art on it.
I took several photos of the lodge building and the street art on it. I love street art.
Lytteltonwitch's Walking the streets of Christchurch Project 