Tales of the Avon Loop

a website by Christchurch Archaeology Project

the archaeology and history of a working class neighbourhood in the heart of Ōtautahi Christchurch

Avonside with Wards Malthouse and Brewery at the left, Christchurch, c.1853. River & broken ground in the foreground, trees & buildings in the distance. Port Hills just visible.

defined by the river

The Ōtākaro Avon River, along New Brighton Road. Reeds visible in the foreground, there is a duck on the river. In the distance are more trees, lamp posts, a fence. The sky is clear.

The Avon Loop snuggles neatly into a loop in the Ōtākaro Avon River, once an awa through the wetlands for Waitaha, Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu, and an important mahinga kai.

Short-finned eel, swimming in very shallow, clear water. Small rounded black cobbles are visible.
Female paradise shelduck

its own little corner of the city

Aerial photograph of the Avon loop, 1959, looking southeast. White's Aviation image.

Cut off from the city by Barbadoes and Kilmore streets, the loop became home to people from all over the world.

The men and women of the loop built houses there, started businesses, raised families. Mostly they lived quiet lives, never thinking that one day archaeologists would investigate their houses and their rubbish. Nor that their stories would become the subject of a website.

George James & Mary Ann Whitehead outside their house, Kilmore Street, Christchurch. Two-storeyed wooden house with veranda & corrugated-iron roof. Picket fence. Large trees.

stories of everyday people

Ōtākaro Avon River
Part of Black Map 274 (c.1860), showing the Avon loop surveyed as Canterbury Association Reserve 21, set aside for the botanical gardens.
Part of Strouts's 1877 map of Christchurch, showing the Avon loop surveyed into smaller town reserves, the buildings extant at the time and the roads that had been surveyed.
1875 newspaper article from the Press, advising that Mary Wheatley had been granted protection of her earnings from her husband, who had deserted her.
Part of the Avon loop, c.1863. Ōtākaro Avon River and broken ground, with Ward's brewery, trees and other buildings in the distance.
Earthenware tea cup, white with a Greek key pattern around the external rim, in blue.
The front/street-facing elevation of a single-storey weatherboard house, with veranda, central front door and pairs of sash windows.
Geroge and Mary Whitehead standing outside their two-storey house on Kilmore Street. Wooden picket fence, trees.
1875 newspaper article from the Press, advising that Mary Wheatley had been granted protection of her earnings from her husband, who had deserted her.
Line drawing of Ellen and Ernest Oppenheim's house, 19 Willow Street. Single storey, weatherboard, quoins, corrugated iron roof, veranda, pairs of sash windows either side of the front door (which has a four panels and a low lock rail).
Asiatic Pheasants plate (broken but nearly complete), found at the Whitehead family's property.
1884 advertisment for the sale of Salvatore Lezza'a confectionery factory in Kilmore Street.
Children's can from 396 Oxford Terrace (Cora Terrace), showing a wooden rowboat on the shores of a body of water with a family around it, including quite young children. On the other side, the letters of the alphabet.
A cardboard birthday card, with the bible verse Isiah 30: 15. Shows birds building a nest and blue flowers.
Half of a wooden ceiling rose, with perforations. Recovered from the house at 36 Bangor Street.
Black and white image of a white parrot, on top of a cage, outside a weatherboard building.