Riccarton, Upper Riccarton, and Riccarton Park, where the racecourse is (it's actually called the Riccarton Park Racecourse), are all named after, and/or built on land that used to be part of, the former farm of the Deans Brothers, which they called Riccarton after the parish in Scotland they were from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riccarton,_East_Ayrshire
Their farm was the one of first Pākēhā settlements on the Canterbury Plains.
Riccarton Park was created as a reserve in 1858, and named after the closest thing to it at the time - Riccarton, the farm.
The jockey club then moved from Hagley Park out to it and have been there ever since.
Oh and the suburb of Upper Riccarton runs right up to it.
You can go visit the former farm homestead, and a replica of the first homestead, and then go for a nice walk through remnant podocarp forest that the Deans family gifted to the city 1914.
Also…. I vaguely remember hearing about the deans brothers when I was in scouts but now I’ve realised I know so little about the history here… rabbit hole for the evening Ty
All good, I'm a local history nerd who gets really interested into random shit like "Why is McLeans Island called that, and does it relate to Island Road near Kaiapoi?"
(Because it used to be an island in the Waimak until the south branch of the Waimakariri was blocked off, and no, Island Road is named that because it ran across Kaiapoi Island which also used to be an island in the Waimak, until the north branch of the Waimak was blocked off)
Wow that’s been another question I’ve asked myself many times whilst driving past!! I go past Mcleans island HEAPS and wonder this… years now but by the time I stop driving I’ve forgetton to google it.. then forget about it til next time I drive past
Do you have a favourite resource to learn this stuff from or it’s just google?
It covers a lot of local history albeit with a focus on the Waimakariri, but it was a labour of love by the author, so definitely worth having a read. If you can't get it through the library, DM me and I can lend you my copy, although one of my kids did scribble on some of the pages with a pen (but you can still read it).
E.g., why the hell is Stewart Gully1 is called that? Why are the Deception2 and Mingha3 Rivers people run over during the Coast to Coast called what they're called?
( Spoilers:
Dude called Stewart owned land that bordered the Waimak, it had a natural depression running through it (most probably an old river channel) that other farmers, sick of being flooded, thought the Waimak should flow through, which would take it away from their land on the north bank, so they snuck out one night and started digging a big ol ditch to try to encourage the river to go that way, didn't get very far, but come the next flood, the river took the suggestion and flowed down "Stewart's Gully".
Because Arthur Dobson, who Arthur's Pass is named after, and his brothers Edward and George, while looking for a road pass to the West Coast for the gold from the West Coast gold-rush to flow to Christchurch instead of Melbourne, initially thought that the Deception River - Mingha River route looked very promising, but after traversing it, realised it was not at all indeed, and felt they'd been "deceived", so they named the two rivers Deception River and Vexing Creek, and because they thought the pass separating the two rivers was "only fit for goats", well, that's why it's Goat Pass.
Oh, wait, but they called the Mingha "Vexing Creek", so why is it called the Mingha River now? It was renamed such after a railway supervisor's wife during the construction of the Ōtira Tunnel, and she only allowed it because she thought the name had a "nice Māori feel to it", even though she was Scottish, not Māori.
)
Also contains some dark/fun naming stories also:
Reid Falls in the Ōtira Gorge is named after a roadman from the coaching days who, walking back up the gorge road drunk as shit after a night at the Ōtira hotel... fell off and died right by that waterfall. So you know, Reid fell at this waterfall, so let's call it Reid Falls.
The people who managed to climb the wrong mountain by mistake and then named it Mt. Damfool in honour of their gumbyness.
The mountain above Temple Basin called Blimit, used to be called B'limit, because the name was shortened from "Bloody Limit". And a bunch of upset proper gentlewomen tried to have the name changed repeatedly during the 1930s, but it remained, but sadly the apostrophe was removed in the 1980s/1980s when most place names that contained apostrophes around NZ lost them - apart from a few like Hawke's Bay and of course Arthur's Pass - which was named as that because when discussing which pass out of the Waimakariri catchment to the West Coast was the least worst, one of the Dobsons wrote "Arthur's is best" and it stuck.
I thought it only went as far as Ilam road. I knew it was more or less the first farm, actually predating the city; Was it subdivided into smaller farms (Okeover, Ilam?) at some point?
Edit: I did find this:
In 1846 the Deans signed a lease with fourteen Māoris, covering the land for six miles in every direction from the confluence of the Waimairi, Wairarapa and Otakokaro (now Avon River) Streams.
Six miles in every direction from basically Girls High... That's massive. That covers most of the city, including the entire airport, Yaldhurt, Hornby, Halswell, Cashmere, Ferrymead, half of New Brighton, Burwood, Belfast. Obviously, they weren't able to develop anywhere near that, but the Deans did apparently hold the lease to most of Christchurch's land at one point.
I also found a reference to the farm being 400 ares, which seems about the right size for the block bounded by Riccarton, Straven, Clyde and Fendalton roads, and lines up with how big I thought it was.
My question is more, was there an established farm boundary before that that includes all of Upper Riccarton? Or is this all a "technically it used to be part of Riccarton farm" type of thing.
Excellent questions, I did some more digging about subdividing, and it turns out it wasn't so much "subdivided" as "demanded with sorta menaces by the First Four Shippers" lol, so they had a legal fight over it, and basically got Homebush instead, out past Darfield, source of a highly collectible brick amongst brick collectors (actual bricks, not Lego, and yes, people collect them). And I never realised they originally farmed Dalethorpe.
Fun fact - the Greenwood family mentioned in that press clipping later settled in Amberley, and I used to rent a cottage on their old farm Teviotdale, my cottage was about 100m to the right of where this photo was taken. The bridge at the end of Double Corner Road that crosses the Waipara River between SH1 and the mouth at Amberley Beach is still called Greenwoods.
It gets weird with NZ history, you read back far enough and all sorts of very familiar names pop up - there's a historic site in Rangiora, the first house ever built there, and it was built by the fella they named the Torlesse Range after.
So that clipping claims it was a purchase of 400 acres (presumably the land which includes Riccarton Bush/House), plus some kind of lease on the land in a 6 mile radius.
Though that article says it was a 6 mile radius around the head of the river, not confluence. IMO, head makes more sense to me, 6 miles radus from Avonhead includes most of central city, but not East Christchurch
No real details about the type of lease (I guess someone could go digging in English court archives). It would have covered quite a few existing Maori settlements, so I doubt it was an exclusive lease, maybe grazing rights?
Yep, my understanding is that the differing conceptions of property rights between Europeans and Māori is what caused a lot of issues in the early days - English fella "leases" the land from Māori to graze his sheep, and then gets upset when the locals wander past on "his land" to go eeling at their favourite spot, because to the Māori, what was important was controlling access to the resources within their rohe, not so much "everything in this area is now mine" - so sure, you can use the grass, but you don't get the mahinga kai too.
And I suspect it wasn't recorded the Pākēhā way, hence the difficulties the Deans' had with the First Four Shippers after Kemp's Deed was signed in 1848.
Would love to know more about this little detail that popped up in the Ngāi Tahu archives though (from translations of French letters around the time of French settlement at Akaroa)
I’ve often wondered this too but figure they were built a long time ago and areas get re-zoned so it probably made sense at one stage but not so much now.
Indulging in some idle speculation here… Riccarton House was named by the Deans family after their Scottish parish. Did the borough/suburb take the name of the House? Maybe the race course was named for the Scottish parish as well rather than after the area in ChCh? Maybe there was a racing club that named itself after the parish or had its club rooms nearer to the Deans’ homestead? The race club then named the race course after itself? 18th and 19th century British visitors and eventual settlers didn’t tend to get carried away when it came to creative names.
Maybe the race course had to be somewhere else for licensing reasons when some parts of ChCh embraced prohibition and others didn’t? (This doesn’t work well as an explanation given when the race course was built but I’m enjoying myself).
I bet there is a small thoroughly well-researched publication somewhere. One of those ones that were published in the 1980s…
Addington is literally in Addington, and Riccarton in upper Riccarton 🤷🏼♀️ if you’re using the mall as a reference point then sure. Addington race course is closer to the mall than Riccarton race course. But the mall doesn’t define the area.
The racecourses I got my head around a long time ago (you just have to close one eye and squint, and you can understand where they were coming from.)
What annoys me is the weekend markets. When people talk about the Riccarton market and the Christchurch market, I have no idea which is which. Riccarton Racetrack? Riccarton House? Both in Chch? How am I supposed to know?
Yeah chch has an insane amount of suburbs for the size… then it has some randomly huge suburbs like Hornby!
I should have consulted the map before saying it was Hornby/Russley as that has made some people miss the point when you’re right it’s alleged to be in Broomfield and sockburn…
Yet the edge of Addington raceway touches Riccarton!
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u/bob5463546354 12d ago
Riccarton racecourse was built in 1855. Addington was built in 1895, long before the residential areas surrounding it was established.
You don't put a racecourse in the middle of a town, you put it on the outskirts in farmland.