Kaiapoi is in Waimakariri County, north of Christchurch on South Island, New Zealand. On the right, you can see the world's most complicated map of where it is.Kaiapoi is in Waimakariri County, north of Christchurch on South Island, New Zealand. On the right, you can see the world's most complicated map of where it is.
Jocelyn, from Larsen's Art and Sign Studio which is based at 30 Cridland Street, took some pictures and also supplied more information. She says...
Cridland Street is to the north west of the town, out of the 'central business area'. Kaiapoi boasts ten restaurants (including a McDonalds), three bakeries, and four bars.
Cridland Street, in the sun.
According to Kaiapoi - A Search for Identity (Pauline Wood, 1993: ISBN 0-473-02331-8), a group of settlers arrived in February 1853, many from Cambridge in England, to create a new settlement to be known as Gladstone. However, a site wasn't set aside for them, and it was decided that several blocks of church reserve land in the neighbourhood of Kaiapoi would be suitable, being close to a navigable river and a large forest. On 31 May 1853, Henry Cridland, the group's chief surveyor, was paid ten pounds for a survey map, which quickly became the plans for the new town. The name 'Gladstone' was quickly dropped in favour of the original name, and the north end of the original town was boundaried by Smith Street, which you can see at the bottom of the part of map above.
Charles Sidey, a businessman, purchased a section of the land in August 1853, and Henry Cridland began to act as his agent. Sidey soon established his own hotel in the town, but his enterprises also included a wool store and a general store. Part of the deal for the land required that five acres of it should be cleared a year, and therefore Sidey needed a large amount of tree sawyers, who soon flocked to the area. However, in September 1854, Henry Cridland began to be concerned about what he saw as the indiscriminate felling of timber from the area's forest. He wrote on 29 September to the Provincial Secretary, arguing that the trees in some areas were being felled badly and made the wood unusable for building, and that the bush licenses in the area should be revoked in order to reserve the timber, particularly on the banks of the river Cam. He succeeded.
There's also some evidence that Henry Cridland planned a jail in the town, and although a contract was entered into, difficulties were encountered, and this was not proceeded with. But according to The Lyttleton Times, a local newspaper: "in less than four years, Kaiapoi had been changed from a wilderness to a thriving town; containing its church, school, courthouse, land office, merchant's offices, stores etc".
Henry Cridland was one of the architects of the town's successful development; and so the Cridland name has a special place in the history of Kaiapoi.
Interestingly, the environment still causes some issues to Cridland these days - but the street, rather than Henry. An expensive stormwater project is planned to stop the street from, sometimes, flooding.
