Family camping at Hanmer River, Christmas/New Year 1958. Annual event with often three generations present.
Do you have any photographs of camping in Canterbury? If so, feel free to contribute to our collection.
The Discovery Wall is a large interactive exhibition which allows several people to simultaneously explore images and stories of the history of the people and places of Christchurch. It is viewable on the ground floor of Tūranga, 60 Cathedral Square, Christchurch, New Zealand. Images displayed on the Wall can also be found on the Discovery Wall website.
October is Photo Hunt month at Christchurch City Libraries. We invite you to share any of your photos and help grow the city’s photographic archive. All entries must be received by 31 October.
Christchurch City Libraries has produced a set of four postcards promoting the competition which are available from your local library. Each week during October we’ll be featuring one of the postcard images on our blog.
As described by a Photo Hunt entrant in 2017, “This photograph is of my Uncle, Aunty and cousins on a summer picnic outing around 1954. I’m not sure of the exact location, but love the image and looks to have been taken in the Banks Peninsula area”.
Date: circa 1954
Entry in the 2017 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt.
About Kete Christchurch
Kete Christchurch is a collection of photographs and stories about Christchurch and Canterbury, past and present. Anyone can join and contribute.
As we move ever closer to the opening of Tūranga, it can be interesting to reflect and look back on how far libraries have come in the last few decades. Looking at our fabulous digital collections I hit a fascinating and poignant vein of images of Christchurch libraries past.
Particularly poignant is this image of staff in 1982 outside the new – now old – central library on the corner of Gloucester Street and Oxford Terrace. It feels very symbolic of change, and hope, and the unexpected – and was recreated in 2013.
Canterbury Public Library staff outside the new library building on the corner of Gloucester Street and Oxford Terrace [1982] File Reference CCL PhotoCD 11, IMG0091Another image shows behind the scenes views of Canterbury Public Library from the 1950s. Lots of stamping and binding and indexing going on! I’m glad to say that our wonderful Bindery is still going strong, but I think we look a little different behind the scenes these days – still heaps of books, but much more technology.
A behind the scenes look at the day to day activities of the Canterbury Public Library [1954] File Reference CCL PhotoCD 11, IMG0090Two more views show cataloguing and processing in the 1960s and 1950s. We still do a considerable amount of cataloguing and getting items shelf ready, but we certainly don’t have tables like that any more, nor do we wear the legendary smocks!
The cataloguing and processing department of the Canterbury Public Library moved to the area that was formerly the bindery, who had moved to the ground floor of the library house next door in Cambridge Terrace [1967] File Reference CCL PhotoCD 11, IMG0092
Cataloguing and processing staff of the Canterbury Public Library in their workroom in Cambridge Terrace [1953] File Reference CCL PhotoCD 11, IMG0093I love looking at photos like this. It’s great to look at where we have come from as we plan our move ahead into the future. However, as much as we have changed, some things do stay the same – piles of books and librarians working hard to connect you with wonderful content.
“A family Christmas in our back yard in Opawa. I am showing off my new scooter, my sister Jenny has a cane dolls pram and my cousin Wayne has a carpentry set. I can’t see what his brother Chris has. My dad has obviously just painted the shed as I can see the ‘wet paint’ sign propped against it.”
Date: 1958
Entry in the 2013 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt.
Do you have any photographs of Christmas in Canterbury? If so, feel free to contribute to our collection.
Kete Christchurch is a collection of photographs and stories about Christchurch and Canterbury, past and present. Anyone can join and contribute.
“Cathedral Square by night the northwest corner with the start of Chancery Lane under the bright white light. The Tivoli theatre later became the Westend, a huge cinema (scene of many happy nights out in my teenage years) complete with cat known to sleep on seats at the back. The old building to the left was later the site of the AMP building, and the one to the right became the Government Life building.”
Date: 18 August 1959.
Entry in the 2016 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt by Isabel Tweedy.
Kete Christchurch is a collection of photographs and stories about Christchurch and Canterbury, past and present. Anyone can join and contribute.
View 1958: This is taken from a clay bank, looking down over the Sumner Gasworks on the corner of Wakefield Ave and Truro Street, Sumner. We lived in the stoker’s old home showing at the top left of the GasHolder ( which is still there today). Probably a rare view of the Gasworks which really doesnt seem to have had many photos taken of, apart from by our family who lived there about 45 years. The accompanying photo of my painting ( with the much smaller Gasholder ) is of the opposite view from our front door area.
View 2010: Triggered by the Sept 4 2010 Quake, I painted this watercolour of the Sumner Gasworks, which was situated on the corner of Wakefield Ave and Truro Street. My Dad, Roy Bradley, was a stoker there for 23 years from 1937 and stoked the last retort on Mon 20th Feb 1961. The Stokehouse was Demolished in 1970.
This is the View I lived with for 20 years. Is from our old home, the Stoker’s house next door. Painted mainly from memory with the help of a pencil sketch of my dad’s, and the background of a photo of family member. I’ve painted the Gas Holder much smaller than it was (artistic licence) as you will see in the other photo.
The painting view was just painted in 2010 but from sketches, old photo and memory. It is not how the Gasworks looked in 2010 as it was closed in 1960 and gone with-in a year or 2. I’d say the view I painted could be also dated as 1958 ( but painted 50 years later).
Date: 1958, 2010
Entry in the 2014 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt by Margaret Norwood.
Kete Christchurch is a collection of photographs and stories about Christchurch and Canterbury, past and present. Anyone can join and contribute.
Nurses’ Home, Christchurch, c.1950s. Kete Christchurch. PH14-266d. Entry in the 2014 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt. CC-BY-NA-SA-3.0 NZ.
From Beautiful Christchurch – a set of postcards containing 8 colour images and 8 black & white, published by Tanner Couch Ltd. This was the second nurses home, built duirng the 1930s.
Date: 1950s.
Kete Christchurch is a collection of photographs and stories about Christchurch and Canterbury, past and present. Anyone can join and contribute.
Entry in the 2015 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt by Yvonne Dixon. Kete Christchurch PH15-044.jpg, CC-BY-NC-SA NZ 3.0
Photo taken John Abernethy with colour-slide film and printed from a Kodak transparency. The former Avon Cinema is on the left and the Clarendon Hotel, where the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh stayed, on the right on the corner of Worcester Street and Oxford Terrace.
Date: 1953.
Christchurch City Libraries has been running an annual Photo Hunt in conjunction with the city’s Heritage Week since 2008. The 2016 Photo Hunt is running again from 1 – 31 October. During the month of October we will be posting a series of images from earlier Photo Hunts.
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 