Places

Roads called Cridland

• Cridland Street, Kaiapoi, New Zealand

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...

• We have lived here for 13 years and love the quiet nature of our street. Unfortunately, the Cam River at the end of the street is not swimmable but was many years ago. As one of the older parts of town it is very quiet over here compared to the new developments that have gone up in recent years.

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.

• Cridland Street, E15, East London, UK is in the borough of Newham, close to Plaistow tube. It's a small street with a small green space, a huge block of flats, and then an industrial building. Our name is misspelled on at least one of the council's signs.
• Cridland Avenue, Greensboro NC, USA: You have to drive along it if you're going to Sharpless and Stavola PA.
• Cridland Road, Greensboro NC, USA: was closed on June 16th 2004 to do some work on it, but is open again now. Which is nice.

Buildings called Cridland

In Spaxton, Somerset, in the UK lives Cridland's Farm. The image above is an Ordnance Survey map from around 1900 showing the farm very clearly: modern-day maps still show a building there, but no mention of the name. Thanks to David Cridland of Australia for spotting this.

Places called Cridland

There are two places called Cridland in Somerset, England. Janet Cridland from Bristol, England says...

• If you are driving along the B3191 coast road from Watchet to Blue Anchor you will pass a lane on your left signposted to the village of Old Cleeve. At the entrance to the lane is Jenny Cridland's Copse. A little further along the B3191 on the right is Cridland's Copse, which can be seen above the rock fall from the beach below the Blue Anchor pub.

Cridland Hill, Queensland, Australia: David Cridland from Australia says...

• Cridland Hill is up in the most remote section of Cape York, Queensland. It is visible from the sea if you can avoid all the reefs. So far, the earliest record I have of it is in Robert Logan Jack's famous book published in 1922 called "Northmost Australia" (vol. 2 p693) . It is marked on modern detailed maps of the area too.
• How this small sandy hill got the name is a mystery. I am working on a theory that the famous Lieutenant William Bligh RN named it while drifting by on the 2nd June 1789 on route from Tahiti to Koepang. This was when he named the hill near to Cridland Hill, called Puddingpan Hill. This theory also involves a letter from the mother (Mary Anne Clements, remarried?) of Charles Cridland the unlawful cridland you mention, that begs leniency for her son on the basis, that he is the son of a Officer in the Royal Navy (deceased by this time I think:1825). If there was a Cridland in the Royal Navy until approx.1800 when Charles was born (he was 17 when sentenced to life transportation in 1820), then Bligh may have known Cridland and named the hill for him.
• Another, less interesting, possibility is that it was named by an Admiralty Hydrographer in approx. 1898-99 while on Queensland Costal Surveys aboard the HMS Paluma. A Lieutenant H.T.A. Bosanquet served on this ship and the hill nearest Cridland Hill is called Bosanquet Hill. There were a lot more Cridlands in Australia by then.