Street name expert hits the road

From native trees to nuns and World War II aircraft, no-one knows the meaning behind Christchurch street names like Bob Pritchard.

Mr Pritchard worked for the Christchurch City Council for 46 years and for most of that time was a Subdivision Officer with responsibility for overseeing new street names. The 69-year-old recently retired from his Council role. 

Bob Pritchard has been overseeing street names for four decades.

When he first started at the council in 1970, wind-up machines were used to calculate areas for subdivisions and a typing pool produced Council letters. In his career he has overseen thousands of new road names, including about 70 last year.

He made recommendations to local Community Boards on whether a proposed street name met the criteria and should be accepted or rejected.

Grounds for refusing a proposed name include it being too similar to one already in use, or being too long to fit on a map.

He also helped come up with ideas for hundreds of new street names, sometimes turning to historic records or reference books about flowers or New Zealand rivers for inspiration.

His job has sparked a personal interest in the stories and history behind street names and he plans to continue this research in his retirement. He is supplying information he finds out to Christchurch City Libraries, which keeps a searchable database recording the history behind street names. 

He discovered that Kitchener’s Knoll in Halswell was the spot where British Field Marshall Lord Kitchener, mounted on horseback, surveyed local troops when he visited the city in 1910.

“I enjoy the feeling of satisfaction when I’ve successfully found out the origin of a street name that wasn’t so obvious. Especially when a resident has called or emailed asking about the story behind a name. And I enjoyed dealing with developers because you get to know them after a while.”

Subdivision street names usually have a theme that reflects earlier use of the land, such as the names of nuns for the Aidanfield subdivision built on land owned by the Good Shepherd Sisters (the subdivision takes its name from Mother Aidan Phelan) or the Wigram Skies subdivision where names are inspired by the air cadets and aircraft at the former flight school and Air Force base, such as Avenger Crescent.

Mr Pritchard will spend his retirement at his property near Oxford where he plans to do some four wheel driving with his dog Sam, taking photographs of the local landscape.