What's in a name?

Rose Cottage. Norfolk Villa. Overton Cottage. Park House. These were all names of houses in nineteenth century Christchurch. As with any name, they tell us things about the people who bestowed and used the name. Names, after all, are a fundamental part of our identity, and much thought goes into their careful selection, from both the name itself to the particular spelling used. House names, in fact, have quite a history, dating back to the Roman era in Western Europe, although they have become less common since the middle of the nineteenth century (Garrioch 1994: 20-21). Once upon a time, they were the only form of ‘address’ a property had (side note: researching this blog led me down quite the rabbit hole about the history of street numbers – basically: capitalism – stay tuned for that blog post in the coming weeks). The use of street numbers was one of the factors that led to the demise of shop signs and house names, but others include changing social organisation and the changing nature of the street itself (Garrioch 1994: 39).

Not an actual house name from Ōtautahi Christchurch. Just an image to break up the long text.

How common were house names in nineteenth century Christchurch? The short answer is, I don’t know. The trick to answering this question is, somewhat obviously, identifying whether or not a house had a name. Let me explain. I’ve identified quite a few named houses in the city, but only through historical research. None of the houses we recorded in post-earthquake Ōtautahi had any physical evidence of a name on the building. Which isn’t to say that that was always the case – in fact, an excellent example of a house name has been recorded by a colleague in Dunedin, where the name was in the fanlight above the front door (Petchey and Brosnahan 2016). The house names I recorded were ones I identified in nineteenth century newspapers, most commonly when a house or its contents was advertised for sale or lease, or when its occupants advertised for servants. Sometimes, too, a birth or death might be recorded at a particular house. But the point is, someone had to be putting notices in the paper for me to find the name. Given that this (a) cost money to do and (b) required you to be doing one of these things, you can see how this means that the house names from potentially quite a large part of society wouldn’t be historically visible.

Were these names I found in the paper visible on the houses at the time? Good question. On the balance of probability, I think so, otherwise what would the point of putting the name in the newspaper have been? (Although there may well have been a status element to this.) Further, where a house name was used by more than one occupant, I think it’s more likely that the name appeared on the house.

Read on to find out more about a selection of the house names I have found, and why the occupants were using that particular name. Fair warning, in some cases the answer is far from satisfactory (reminding us yet again of the frustrations of historical research and how people can remain ultimately unknowable, in spite of the wealth of information it is possible to find about them).

Como c.1878-c.1883*

Como. Image: P. Mitchell.

Como sale notice. Image: Press 2/2/1878: 3.

No clue. Actually, that’s not quite true. The best I can come up with to explain this house name is that it is a reference to Lake Como, in Italy, an area famed for its beauty (and, more recently, celebrities…). The couple who built the house – Mr and Mrs Richard Rossiter Palmer – were only in Christchurch for about two years, and I’ve found little information about them. It’s possible that they had been to Lake Como and loved it, but it is also possible that the couple simply liked the name and all that it stood for: beauty, holidays, the glamour of Italy (some things don’t change). I lean towards this latter interpretation, partly because this was not the only house called Como around at the time: there was a Como Cottage in St Asaph Street and a Como in Rakaia (Lyttelton Times 8/4/1878: 1, Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1878: 2).

Cora Villa c.1879-c.189

Cora Villa. Image: P. Mitchell.

Cora Villa, to let. Image: Lyttelton Times 27/11/1879: 1.

This one is quite simple, and sad. The house was built by Joseph and Harriett Francis, and it was named for their daughter, Cora, who died in infancy, just before the house was built (BDM Online n.d.).

Aubyn House c.1883- c.1893

Aubyn House, a name that only applied to the house on the right of this pair of semi-detached houses. Image: M. Hennessey.

The sale of furniture at Aubyn House. Image: Press 28/6/1883: 4.

Another elusive connection. The St Aubyn family were (and still are) a prominent family in Cornwall, owning and living at St Michael’s Mount since the seventeenth century (St Michael’s Mount 2023). However, I could not find any connection between the family who used the name – Alfred and Alice Thompson – and Cornwall, or the St Aubyns. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t a connection (absence of evidence and all that…).

Aorangi c.1884- c.1916

Aorangi. Image: L. Tremlett.

Aorangi, which functioned as a school as well as a home. Image: Lyttelton Times 3/5/1884: 7.

Cultural appropriation. And a puzzler. Some readers will be familiar with ‘Aorangi’ as the name by which Aoraki Mt Cook was referred to by some in the mid-late twentieth century, before this error of dialect was corrected. However, the references I found to Aorangi in mid-nineteenth century newspapers were to an Aorangi in the North Island and, in early 1884, to a new steamship called the Aorangi (New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian 5/11/1856: 3, Press 26/1/1884: 2). Not a single reference to the mountain. The steamship was owned by the New Zealand Shipping Company and called at Wellington and Christchurch on its maiden voyage to New Zealand in early 1884, bringing passengers (and freight) to New Zealand and taking the same, and frozen meat, back to England. There was A LOT of fuss about it in the papers.

The Yaldwyns, who gave the house its name, had lived in Otago and Wellington before moving to Christchurch, and William Yaldwyn had been a government-appointed auditor for a number of areas in the lower North Island. It’s possible that this is how they came across the name or, more prosaically, that all the media coverage of the ship introduced them to word, they liked it and thus they used it to name their house in May 1884.

Cotswold House c.1884- c.1895

Cotswold House. Image: M. Hennessey.

Sarah Fisher, of Cotswold House, advertising for a servant. Image: Lyttelton Times 13/2/1884: 1 .

Named as such by Sarah and the Reverend Thomas Fisher. In fact, probably just named by Thomas, who was from the village of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, just on the outskirts of the Cotswolds (Ancestry 2019). Of note is that Sarah and Thomas named their earlier house in Christchurch Alcester Lodge (Star (Christchurch) 30/12/1871: 1), a name preserved for a time in the adjoining Alcester Street (CCL 2016: 21). As it happens, the street immediately to the north is Winchcombe Street, named for Thomas’s place of birth. Alcester is about 35 km north of Winchcombe.

St Vedas c.1896- c.1930

St Vedas. Image: F. Bradley.

St Vedas, for sale. Image: Press 13/121930: 28,

Not even an actual saint. There is a St Vedast in the Catholic pantheon of saints, and it’s possible that ‘St Vedas’ was an error by the newspaper (or even by Jane and John Nicholson). St Vedast, however, was typically anglicised as St Foster – although there have been three St Vedast churches in England (two of which remain standing; Wikipedia 2023). But John Nicholson was from Ireland (of course I don’t know where Jane was from), where there are no recorded St Vedast churches, although it does increase the possibility that he might have been Catholic.

Tainui c.1896-c.1916

Tainui. Image: K. Webb.

Tainui, to let. Image: Lyttelton Times 17/5/1895: 1.

More cultural appropriation. This time by Henry and Susan Kirk. For those readers who aren’t familiar with the word, Tainui are a North Island-based iwi, more commonly known as Waikato-Tainui. Waikato-Tainui were attacked by the Crown, and their lands invaded, in the early 1860s. Some 1.2 million acres of their land was subsequently confiscated, as punishment for their ‘rebellion’, a process known as raupatu. Would the Kirks have known about this? It’s hard to say. The story had certainly disappeared from the local newspapers by the 1890s (although Waikato-Tainui continued to fight for redress; Waikato-Tainui n.d.). As with Aorangi, there was a ship called Tainui that was frequently mentioned in the newspapers in the 1890s…

Or there’s another factor, and it’s relevant for Aorangi too. By the late nineteenth century, te reo Māori names for houses were becoming popular, frequently chosen for the way they sounded, rather than with any recognition of the meaning or cultural context of the word (Cowan 1900: 1, Petersen 2000: 57). This was part of a broader trend of Māori art, decorative details and carvings starting to be used in Pākehā houses (Petersen 2000: 57). In her discussion of this, Petersen situates this development within a growing nationalism on the part of New Zealand’s Pākehā population, coupled with a developing sense of national identity, and that, for some at least, the country’s Māori culture had a role to play in this. Furphy (2002: 59-60) goes a step further in his discussion of a similar trend for using Aboriginal words for house names in Australia, siting this within a process of indigenisation. This was a process by which colonial settlers sought to become ‘indigenous’ by assimilating and appropriating indigenous culture, thereby carving out a new identity for themselves that drew on that culture to firmly embed them in that new place, at the same time as they rode roughshod over the indigenous culture in question. There is an argument to be made that the Yaldwyns and Kirks were active participants in this process in New Zealand.

Furphy’s detailed examination of this trend notes that indigenous names were typically used without any knowledge of their cultural significance or context, but chosen simply because they sounded good – a conclusion that is striking in its similarity to James Cowan’s (1900: 1) observation that New Zealand’s home owners experienced “a genuine delight when they discover a smoothing-sounding and appropriate combination of liquid Māori words”. There is no record of how Māori felt about this trend, but the fact that, in te ao Māori, names are typically gifted, not simply taken, indicates how problematic choices like those made by the Yaldwyns and the Kirks were. Add to that the fact that ‘Tainui’ in particular is a name of immense significance, and affixing them to a house is likely to have been particularly offensive.

These house names, then, demonstrate something of the range of approaches people took to naming their home. There were the Francises, memorialising their lost daughter; the Fishers, looking with nostalgia to the place they – he – had left behind; and the Palmers, selecting a name that embodied rest, relaxation and retreat. And then there were the Yaldwyns and the Kirks, who chose te reo Māori words, possibly just because they sounded melodious... And possibly after being introduced to the word via ships, of all things. But there’s another element to this, too. The Fishers, in selecting an English name, essentially looked to the past and the place they had come from, reinforcing their cultural background to their neighbourhood and community. The Yaldwyns and the Kirks, however, for all the problems with their name selection, were looking to the future. Perhaps they even saw themselves as New Zealanders or, at least, closer to their colonial home than to the home they had left behind.

 Katharine Watson

*These are the dates the name is known to have been in use.

References

Ancestry, 2019. Rev. Thomas Richard Fisher. [online] Available at: https://www.ancestry.com.au/family-tree/person/tree/28849058/person/12514637379/facts?_phsrc=AxX295&_phstart=successSource [Accessed 25 January 2019].

BDM Online. Available at: https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/

CCL, 2021. Christchurch Street Names – A. Available at: https://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/christchurch-place-names/

CCL, n.d. Frederick Thompson, 1805-1881. [online] Available at: https://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/People/T/ThompsonFrederick/

Cowan, James, 1900. Maori place names. New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 June 1900, p.1.

Furphy, Sam, 2002. Aboriginal house names and settler Australian identity. Journal of Australian Studies 26(72): 59-68.

Garrioch, David, 1994. House names, shop signs and social organization in Western European cities, 1500-1900. Urban History 21(1): 20-48.

Lyttelton Times (Christchurch). Available online at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian. Available online at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

Petchey, Peter and Brosnahan, Sean, 2016. Finding meaning and identity in New Zealand buildings archaeology: the example of ‘Parihaka’ House, Dunedin. Journal of Pacific Archaeology 7(2): 26-42.

Petersen, Anna K. C., 2000. The European use of Maori art in New Zealand homes c.1890-1914. In: B. Brookes, ed. At Home in New Zealand: History, Houses, People. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2000, pp.57-73.

Press. Available online at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

St Michael’s Mount, 2023. St Michael’s Mount. [online] Available at: https://www.stmichaelsmount.co.uk/about-us [Accessed 19 October 2023].

Star (Christchurch). Available online at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

The Argus. Available online at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/

Waikato-Tainui, n.d. Te Hiitori o Te Raupatu. [online] Available at: https://waikatotainui.com/about-us/history/ [Accessed 19 October 2023].

Wikipedia, 2023. Vedast. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedast [Accessed 19 October 2023].

Ink-credible inks

This past week (let’s be honest, this year) has been a bit chaotic, work-wise, so it’s another blog post of artefact photos from me. Hopefully, in the next post I write, I’ll be able to give a bit more of an update on the database project and what we’re up to, but that day is not today. This week, because I’ve been doing a lot of writing and scribbling with pens and pencils, I’ve decided to showcase writing implements, particularly ink bottles. Most of us don’t use ink for writing as much as we used to and, thanks to the ballpoint pen, we certainly don’t require ink in the same format as our ancestors did. The ink bottles used by people in the nineteenth and early twentieth century came in a range of forms and sizes, but can be separated broadly into inkwells - that is, small bottles into which the pen-nib was dipped directly - and larger, ‘bulk’ ink bottles, used to refill these smaller bottles and inkwells. As an artefact of daily life, they are an indication of literacy, although not the only one. From the marks and names on the bottles, we can see the trade relationships to Britain and Europe and learn something about developments in ink manufacturing; from the shapes, we can learn about changes and innovations in glass-making during the nineteenth century.

A small circular inkwell with black residue still visible inside the bottle. This was found on the site of the old Occidental Hotel and could have been used by a hotel staff or a guest staying there. Image: Maria Lillo Bernabeu.

Penny ink bottles! So called because of their price, these are a very common find on nineteenth century archaeological sites in Christchurch (and New Zealand). Image: Jessie Garland.

P. and J. Arnold were British based manufacturers and exporters of ink during the nineteenth century. Their company had its beginnings in the early eighteenth century under another name and, by the nineteenth century, they were producing up to 30 different kinds of ink that were sent around the world. Image: Jessie Garland.

These delightful little bottles are known as ‘boat inks’ by collectors, although you might have to squint to see the resemblance to a boat. They’re notable for the grooves along the shoulder of the bottle, which allowed the user to rest their pen on the bottle without it rolling off. Image: Jessie Garland.

A cone ink (otherwise known as a “ring cone” or “cone carmine”). The inspiration for the name is a little more obvious here, given the distinctive shape, while ‘ring’ refers to the ring of glass on the shoulder of the bottle. This was found in association with an 1890s-early 1900s burn layer on a site on the west of the city. Image: Chelsea Dickson.

A beautiful wee octagonal ink bottle. This has the crude “burst-off” finish characteristic of these bottles, which were cheap and easily made. This one is from a c. 1880s context in the central city. Image: Jessie Garland.

A tiny square ink well with a slightly uneven base (this would not have stood flat on a desk!). I love that you can see the uneven cavity of the inside of the bottle through the side - how the glass pools in one corner but thins in the other. Image: Jessie Garland.

Another very predictable name - this is what’s known as a “bell ink”, although the bell shape is not so distinctive in this example as it might be in some others. This was found in a c. 1860s-1870s collection of rubbish deposited into a central city gully channel. Image: Jessie Garland.

An ink bottle shaped like a shoe! Why not. Image: Jessie Garland.

I love this bottle. This is what’s known as a churchwarden ink bottle, most commonly associated with red ink and identifiable from the distinctive square finish (or top). This was found on a site in Lyttelton, although we can’t associate it with any one business or household. It was made by Doulton and Co., Lambeth, potters well-known for their stoneware bottles and jars. The registration mark on the side dates its production to some time after 1876. Image: Jessie Garland.

French ink! It wasn’t just English inks and ink bottles exported to colonies like New Zealand. Several of these bottles, which bear the mark of Antoine et Fils (Antoine and Son) ‘L’Encre Japonaise’ (Japanese Inks), have been found throughout the city in deposits dating to the 1870s and 1880s. Antoine et Fils were Parisian based ink manufacturers operating from at least the 1870s, although we don’t know much about their business. Image: Jessie Garland.

And last, but by no means least, an ink bottle with a truly literary link (beyond the obvious). This ink bottle is stamped with the mark of Smith, Elder and Co., a London based publishing company who famously published Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in 1847. The company began as a bookseller and stationer, but became well-known as a publisher after the success of Jane Eyre. This bottle was found on a site associated with a local bookseller and stationer on Colombo Street in the 1860s. Image: Jessie Garland.

Underground Overground post: A man named Wuzerham

Today’s blog post comes to you from Underground Overground Archaeology, and it’s all about a man named Wuzerham. Wuzerham was an Indian indentured servant who came to Christchurch in the 1850s, with Jane and John Cracroft WIlson (who I’ve written about before in the post on 1850s houses in the city). This post provides an insight into racism in the 19th century city, and the experiences of one Indian man. It’s also a great example of how the details of a life can be constructed from primary sources that are about a person, rather than written by that person.

On the mysteries of doors

I know, I know: doors, on the face of it, are not the least bit mysterious. They’re quite solid and stable and kind of unassuming. I mean, they might feature in the odd drama – door slammed! – or serve as a tightly guarded boundary by a child – keep out! – but these are (hopefully) occasional roles. And for the most part, I’m guessing you don’t think too much about them – unless they start squeaking, of course… Before we get to the mysterious aspects of doors, let’s start by considering their function of a door. Which probably seems barely worthy of consideration, but bear with me.

A particularly fabulous late Victorian internal door. Image: F. Bradley.

At their most basic, doors provide access to a room. In so doing, they can also serve to keep heat in, or dust and dirt out. They can also keep noise and smells in (or out). Doors, then, are also a means of control – they help control the climate and environment of a room. They also control access: a closed door effectively means knock before entering, while an open door invites entry freely. Thus, they become part of a boundary, between spaces, or between people. In this way, doors can be used to control social interactions, essentially establishing boundaries between those in the room and those outside. In Victorian homes where servants were employed, such a mechanism could have been used to separate servants from family members and their activities.

If these were the function of a door, what of its appearance? Well, by far the most common internal door form in 19th century Christchurch was a four-panel door with a low lockrail (internal doors are my focus here today). In these doors, which you’re probably familiar with, the panels are set into bed mouldings. The position of the lockrail is important – this is where the handle and, perhaps more obviously, the lock were set, and a low lockrail was at about hand-height for most adults. But here’s the thing. The position of the lockrail changes in the early 20th century and becomes high – still perfectly reachable for an adult, but not so for a child. This has long intrigued me, because it’s the Victorian era that we think of as being that of children being seen and not heard. But a child could easily have opened a door in a Victorian era house. Not so much an Edwardian era one.

A typical Victorian era internal door, with four panels and a low lock rail. Image: K. Webb.

A typical Edwardian era internal door, also with four panels, but with a high lock rail. Image: K Webb.

Why, then, this change? I wish I knew. The simplest answer is fashion, but there is always a reason why fashions change – this is the whole point of material culture studies: nothing happens just because. There is a bigger shift that’s going on in New Zealand at around this time, with society becoming less formal. This sees a number of changes in houses, and the way space in them is used, but increasing the height of the door handle doesn’t fit with this (Leach 2000: 84-85). It may simply have been that doors needed to change, to look different, to mark those broader changes that were taking place.

But here’s another thing about those 19th century internal doors: they all had locks, presumably for extra security. As someone who’s not particularly good at locking even external house doors, this one bemuses me – and the crime rate in 19th century Christchurch was not that high. But the crime rate in the cities and countries Christchurch’s colonial settlers had left behind may have been, and so people may simply have been used to locks on internal doors as a standard thing. Edwardian internal doors also all had locks – in fact, I’m fairly certain locks on internal doors were a thing until at least World War II, but I don’t know exactly when they ceased to be the norm (nor when they first became common). The fact, though, that doors continued to be made with locks suggests that this was functionality that people wanted. I am curious, though, about when these locks stopped being the norm, and why that might have happened.

Which brings me to my final door conundrum: the position of them and the way they opened. It was by no means always the case, but doors were typically positioned in the middle of a wall. I appreciate that this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you live in a modern house, well, for starters, there are probably far fewer doors per room than there were in a Victorian house. But, more pertinent to the current discussion, in a modern house the door is typically at one end of a wall, and it opens back against the adjoining wall (in some cases, this was the only option, thanks to the layout of the house). Which makes sense, right? This way, the door doesn’t obscure the room and nor does it take up unnecessary space. But in 19th century houses, even when the door was at one end of the wall, it typically opened into the room, rather than swinging back against the adjoining wall. And in rooms where the door was positioned more centrally, it often opened in such a way that it obscured the bulk of the room as you entered (if you had to open the door when you entered). Why might this have been the case?

A standard villa, Bassett Street, Christchurch, c.1898. Notice how the doors into Rooms 2 & 8 are positioned centrally in the walls, and the way they open essentially obscures the room as you enter. Meanwhile, the doors into the other rooms are positioned at one end of the wall (which is unusual), but the doors do not swing back against the adjoining wall, but instead swung into the room. Image: P. Mitchell and K. Watson.

It’s hard to know. Was it a concern for doors swinging back against the adjoining wall and damaging the latter that led to the angle of opening? Did a door opening into a room, and obscuring part of the room as it was opened, provide more of a sense of drama, more of a slow reveal of the contents of that room (remembering that Victorians had A LOT of things on display)? Or did it help to preserve the privacy of those in the room, particularly in a house where there were servants (and there were concerns about separating families and their servants; Leach 2000: 80, Macdonald 2000: 42)? Was that the door, with its moulded door surround, was more of a feature within a room if it were centrally positioned, and thus became part of the room’s display, as it were?

See? Doors are maybe not quite so immediately knowable as you thought. The mysteries they pose are not huge ones, but resolving them would help us to better understand human behaviours in the past, including people’s attitudes towards their house and the use of space in it, towards security and towards their relationships with other people, particularly other people with whom they shared their house. Human behaviours shift in response to and in line with broader changes in society, to changes in economic systems, morals and belief systems, amongst other things. These behaviours are not just reflected in our material culture – such as houses – but are negotiated through it.

 Katharine Watson

References

Leach, H., 2000. The European house and garden in New Zealand: a case for parallel development. In: B. Brookes, ed. At Home in New Zealand: Houses, History, People. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, pp.73-88.

Macdonald, C., 2000. Strangers at the hearth: the eclipse of domestic service in New Zealand homes c.1830s-1040s. In: B. Brookes, ed. At Home in New Zealand: Houses, History, People. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, pp.41-56.

On windows

These days, in Aotearoa, we expect a house to have windows. While this has by no means always been the case across cultures or throughout time, it was the expectation of the European colonial settlers who arrived in Christchurch in the 19th century. Conveniently for a buildings archaeologist (or anyone else wanting to work out when a house was built), not only were windows ubiquitous, they’re also quite useful for helping you work when a house might have been built. Caveat, though: all the dating information that follows is specific to Christchurch. These dates might be the same or similar for other parts of Aotearoa, but I don’t know that for sure. For other places, they might at least provide a useful starting point, or a rough indication. Which leads me to another caveat: I’d never recommend relying on just windows to date a house – I think of dating a house as a bit like a process of triangulation, as it relies on a range of sources.

Images of houses in Lyttelton and Christchurch from the 1850s and 1860s show that houses had either casement or sash windows, and at times, it’s quite hard to tell which. It’s also hard to know which type was more common in these decades – in the sample of 101 houses I analysed for my PhD, three of the four houses built during this period had casement windows. But, when you start looking at newspapers from the period, advertisements that mention sash windows were nearly ten times more common than those that mentioned casement or French windows (as they were also known).

A casement window. Casement windows (also known as French windows) hinged on the side.

A four-light sash window, formed from two sashes, one above the other, that slide up to open. Note the small horns or lugs at the base of the upper sash (& read on to find out more about them!).

By the 1870s, though, sash windows were the most common type of window used in Christchurch houses. In fact, they were pretty much the only type used in new builds, if the results of my analysis can be relied on (and I like to think they can). They would remain as such until the early years of the 20th century. Which brings me to my first dating tip.

Dating tip #1: if your house has (original) casement windows, it was built in the 1850s/1860s, or in the early 20th century – they come into vogue again c.1910.

Sash windows were available right from the outset of the colonial settlement of Lyttelton and Christchurch. More than that, sash windows were being made here from the 1850s. It’s perhaps more accurate to say that they were being assembled here from that time. As well as people advertising that they were making sash windows, there were advertisements in the paper for window glass (and glass putty), and people may have been making the frames here from scratch, or may have imported the frames/frame components and then added the glass. Why this would be, I’m not sure, but it may have reflected the potential for windows to break when shipped here.

R. C. Bealby, covering all the bases by selling glass, putty and sash windows in 1850s Lyttelton. Image: Lyttelton Times 22/2/1851: 1.

In the period between 1850 and 1900, sash windows changed in a couple of key ways. Firstly, there was the number of panes. The earliest sash windows had numerous small panes (or ‘lights’). I’m not sure at what point the four-light sash window (the sash window shown above is a four-light window, having two lights in each sash) becomes most common, as there weren’t enough pre-1880 houses in my sample to draw any firm conclusions about this. But I can tell you that standard-sized two-light sash windows begin to appear in the late 1870s (there’s a smaller type around earlier on), and were the predominant type by the early 1880s.

A two-light sash window, with just a single pane of glass in each sash. Unlike the four-light sash shown above, there are no horns on the upper sash in this example.

Dating tip #2: If your house has four-light sash windows, it was probably built before c.1885. If it has two-light sash windows, it could have been built any time from c.1875 and was almost certainly built after c.1885.

The other change in sash windows occurred at around the same time (although not always on the same windows). This was the appearance of horns (or lugs) on the upper sash. Most sources suggest that these horns fulfilled a structural purpose: as the glass panes in sash windows increased in size (which happened as the number of panes decreased), horns were added to the upper sash to improve the strength of the corner joint and better support the weight of the glass (Sash Window Restorations, 2023). Like two-light sash windows, sashes with horns first appeared in Christchurch in the late 1870s, but were not common until the early 1880s. Windows without horns did persist, however.

Dating tip #3: well, it’s much the same as #2 – if your house has sash windows without horns, it was probably built before c.1885. If it has windows with horns, it could have been built any time from c.1875 and was almost certainly built after c.1885.

Of course the adoption of technology never quite works in a nice, orderly chronological fashion (and, let’s face it, if it did, it would be so much less interesting – although easier): you will find sash windows with two-lights and no horns, and others with four-lights and horns (as in the examples shown here). You’ll also find houses from the 1890s with four-light windows, and houses from the 1860s with two-light sash windows (but these tended to be a narrower form, not the dimensions that were common by the late 19th century). Old forms persisted, building elements were reused, fashion worked in peculiar ways and there were always early adopters.

This house was built by Harriet and John Snell in c.1899, but had two-light sash windows (with horns). John was a dealer and in 1897 he was advertising the sale of building materials from the recently demolished Central Hotel, including sash windows (Star (Christchurch) 9/9/1897: 3, 17/11/1897: 3). The Central Hotel was extant by at least 1863 and would not have had two-light sash windows (Lyttelton Times 29/7/1863: 3, 20/4/1865: 6). It is possible that the sash windows in the house at 558 New Brighton Road came from that hotel. Image: K. Webb.

But wait, there’s more! Yes, there’s another way that windows can help us date when a house was built: the shape of the bay window. Think of bay windows as having three main forms: splayed, rectangular and octagonal. Photographs indicate that rectangular bay windows were not unusual in the 1850s and 1860s, particularly on houses built in the Gothic style (which often had the aforementioned narrow sash windows). In the 1860s and 70s, though, the splayed bay was the predominant type, with the rectangular bay appearing again in the early 1880s, and quickly becoming the most common form. In Christchurch, it seems as though it wasn’t until the late 1890s that the octagonal form was used (although I know this form was introduced earlier in the 19th century elsewhere in New Zealand).

Plan view of a splayed bay window.

Plan view of an octagonal bay window.

Plan view of a rectangular bay window.

Dating tip #4: Splayed bay windows? Probably built in 1860s or 1870s. Rectangular? Probably built in the 1880s or 1890s (but perhaps the 1850s or 1860s, although these are of a somewhat different shape than the later ones). Octagonal? Late 19th or early 20th century.

Before I finish, I want to squeeze in a couple more window titbits. No one, I am sure, will be surprised to learn that, the more windows a house had, the wealthier the occupant is likely to have been. There’s a certain irony to this because, also, the more windows, the colder the house no doubt was. Clearly, if you were wealthier, you probably had more fireplaces, but there were only so many you could have, and those 19th century fireplaces only put out a certain amount of heat – and that wasn’t much, regardless of how wealthy you were. Windows also came in varying sizes, at varying prices. But there’s another way that wealth came into play. Most rooms only had one set of windows. Of course, it was only possible for rooms on the corner of a house to have more than one set of windows, but it was only in the homes of the wealthy that this was likely to have been the case. The majority of corner rooms just had the one set.

The cost of sash windows in New Zealand, 1883. Source: Leys 1883: 724, 728, 730.

Windows, then, like halls, are one of the components of a house that can tell you more about a house than you might have first thought. They’re perhaps a little more ‘practical’ than halls in that regard, being able to help us work out when a house was built – although they also have insights to offer in terms of wealth and class. Stay tuned for a future post on doors…

Katharine Watson

References

Leys, T. W. Brett’s Colonists’ Guide and Cyclopedia of Useful Knowledge: Being a Compendium of Information by Practical Colonists. Auckland: H. Brett, 1883.

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Sash Window Restorations, 2023. “History of the Sash Window: Part 3.” Sash Window Restorations. Accessed 7 September 2023. Available at: https://sashwindowrestorations.co.uk/history-of-the-sash-window-part-3/

Star (Christchurch). Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

Underground Overground blog: The Christchurch Public Library

Libraries are wonderful institutions, providing so much more than books to read and consult (although that’s pretty important!) and I, personally, would be lost without our local Christchurch public libraries. This post from Underground Overground explores the history and architecture of the Christchurch Public Library, from its beginnings as the Christchurch Mechanics’ Institute, until its eventual demolition following the earthquakes.

If you’d like to learn a bit more about the library complex, check out the following blog posts about the archaeology and architecture of the librarian’s house, which stood immediately to the north of the old library until it, too, was demolished following the earthquakes.

Fan-tan raid! 32 Chinese arrested! Four Europeans arrested!

This wasn’t quite the headline in June 1899, but it was pretty close. This raid took place at the home of Chin Sing, in Tuam Street, a site we investigated a bit after the earthquakes. We didn’t find any evidence of Chin Sing’s occupation (we didn’t find much of anything) but it’s since provided me with an entry point for learning more about the Chinese presence in 19th century Christchurch, and the Chinese experience of life in the city. This 1899 raid was not the first on Chin Sing’s property (or on the Chinese in general), but what happened next was a little bit different. Before we get onto that, though, let’s look at Chin Sing himself in a little more detail. Or, at least, in as much detail as it’s possible to find out. Fair warning, there’s not a lot.

One of the few advertisements Chin Sing placed in the paper, indicating that he had sufficient custom without having to advertise. Image: Star (Christchurch) 4/3/1885: 2.

I don’t know where in China Chin Sing came from, when he came to New Zealand or how he ended up in Christchurch. Chances are that he had come from southern China to work on the goldfields in either Otago or on the West Coast, as a significant number of Chinese men did in the 1860s (Ip 2015). By 1883, he had taken up residence on Tuam Street, where he established himself as a cabinetmaker (Wises 1883-84: 92). His premises were on the north side of the street, just east of the corner with High Street, and they had previously been occupied by Yee Quong, another Chinese cabinetmaker (Wises 1878-79: 71). Chin Sing’s premises were demolished and replaced in the early 20th century, so I don’t know what they looked like, but I do know that he leased Part Town Sections 976 and 978, and so it’s possible that he lived in one or other of the buildings extant on those sections in 1877.

Chin Sing’s premises were on the rear of Town Sections 976 and 978 (Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1899: 2). Image: Strouts 1877.

Chin Sing operated his business in Tuam Street until c.1902, at which point it’s not clear what happened to him. It’s possible he went back to China – many of the Chinese men who came to New Zealand in the 19th century did so with the intention of making some money and then returning to China with it. For this reason, they were often described as ‘sojourners’ (Moloughney and Stenhouse 1999: 55). When anti-Chinese sentiment (i.e. racism) began to rear its head, this was one of the factors that white New Zealanders cited when stating why Chinese should be kept out of New Zealand (Moloughney and Stenhouse 1999: 48, Fairburn 2003: 77).

I know, also, that Chin Sing had two sons (Star (Christchurch) 21/5/1896: 3, Press 6/1/1898: 3). I found no mention of a wife, and it is possible that he had left his wife in China – most Chinese men who came to New Zealand did not bring wives (perhaps because their intention was always to return), and few married while here (although I did find an example of a Chinese man who married a white New Zealand woman; Fairburn 2003: 77, Lyttelton Times 23/4/1879: 4). The poll tax – established in 1881 and increased significantly in 1896 – made it less likely that men would bring their wives with them, due to the costs involved (Fairburn 2003: 77). Certainly, the sense I gained of the Chinese community in Christchurch through my research was that it was a masculine one, but that could just reflect the general difficulties of finding women in 19th century newspapers.

The first raid on Chin Sing’s premises for a fan-tan game came in 1891, but this was by no means the first raid during a fan-tan game in Christchurch (that seems to have been in 1882, in case you’re curious about dates; Globe 27/2/1882: 3, Press 21/5/1891: 3). Fan-tan was a Chinese gambling game (you read more about how it’s played) and thus was technically illegal under the Gaming and Lotteries Act of 1881. As newspaper correspondents noted after almost every raid on a Chinese fan-tan game, in reality it was little different from playing poker or betting on horse, and where were the prosecutions of people doing that? (Each fan-tan raid did seem to provoke a series of letters to the editor, some in support of the arrested Chinese men, others railing against them.) What’s of interest about this particular raid is that Chin Sing had been dobbed in by one Ah Quong, whom Chin Sing may or may not have refused credit for opium (it was a he said, he said kind of situation – but confirms that the Chinese living in Christchurch were smoking – and dealing in – opium; Press 30/7/1891: 2). In another raid on a fan-tan game, the police were also tipped off by concerned members of the public – well, concerned employers, actually, who were apparently worried that their employees were gambling away their wages (Lyttelton Times 17/3/1890: 6). Whether or not this is actually what they were concerned about remains lost in the mists of time. Anyway. In 1891, the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence and Ah Quong was ordered to pay the solicitor’s fee (Lyttelton Times 17/3/1890: 6). It’s a seemingly odd detail, but one of the details that emerged from this case was that Chin Sing had a boarding house on his section in Tuam Street (Press 17/3/1890: 3).

A letter to the editor noting the hypocrisy of arresting Chinese for gambling, given the gambling that Europeans indulged in. Image: Lyttelton Times 26/9/1888: 3.

In 1899, it wasn’t so much a tip-off that led to the raid, but more that the police knew that the following day was a Chinese feast day, and thus that the men would have gathered for gambling (there was some suggestion that they were gambling to raise money to pay for the feast, rather than for personal profit; Press 15/6/1899: 3). The arrested men – the 32 Chinese and four Europeans referred to at the start – were then taken to the lock-up and the Chinese men were refused bail, something that had not happened following previous raids (these raids seemed to happen at reasonably regular intervals). In this case, the excuse given was that bail couldn’t be allowed because how on earth would the (white) policemen recognise the arrested men once they had been released (Star (Christchurch) 12/6/1899: 2)? This meant that the men were kept in the police cells in fairly grim circumstances – it was the middle of winter, and they were given about one blanket between every four or five men. They were also barely fed enough for one person for the time period, let alone enough for 36 men (Lyttelton Times 17/6/1899: 8). Bail was in the end arranged, but not until the end of the following day. In the end, most of the men arrested were convicted and fined (Press 15/6/1899: 3).

What was different about what followed was the involvement of the Reverend J. J. Doke, the minister at the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church. Doke knew a number of the Chinese men involved, some of whom were learning about Christianity – in fact, there was a room in Chin Sing’s house that contained bibles and hymn books, in which Doke taught any who were interested (Press 15/6/1899: 3). While Doke was certainly concerned with converting these men, he was also instrumental in bringing the conditions in the cells at the police lock-up to light, and in providing further insight into the lives of the Chinese in late 19th century Christchurch. Following the raid, he preached a sermon on this very matter, which was reproduced in the Lyttelton Times. In particular, he noted that the Chinese found it hard to find accommodation anywhere in the city, because people were unwilling to rent rooms or buildings to them (thanks to racism, pure and simple, although the stated reasons were that Chinese people were dirty and immoral and carried diseases). I suspect that this is why Chin Sing and another of the local Chinese, James (Lee) Goon, ran boarding houses. Doke went on to state that there were few places for the Chinese to congregate and socialise, and thus Chin Sing’s house filled a valuable role in this regard (and that it was inevitable that they would play fan-tan). It was Doke who accused the police of deliberately targeting this particular night, and suggested that some of those arrested and charged may well have been innocent. He also accused the police of previously watching games of fan-tan at Chin Sing’s house, but doing nothing about them, beyond warning him not to let Europeans play (Lyttelton Times 19/6/1899: 6).

The Rev. J. J. Doke. Image: www.findingmatters.org.

Doke’s sermon provides an insight into the reality of Chinese lives in 19th century Christchurch and the ways in which racist attitudes played out. As Miles Fairburn has noted, little is known about this sort of everyday racism, because it so often went unreported and unrecorded (acknowledging that Manying Ip’s work has gone some way to address this; Fairburn 2003: 66). It is clear that the Chinese community here in the city kept to themselves, a situation in part forced on them by the effects of racism (i.e. white New Zealanders refusing to rent them property), and in part a response to the more physical effects of that racism. Few seem to have spoken English to any great extent, which may have added to the relative isolation of the community. A number ran businesses, although it is not clear to what extent these were patronised by Europeans, but the advertisements placed in newspapers suggest that Europeans were part of their target market. Others worked as gardeners or hawkers. There were clear examples of racists attacks targeting the community, including both vandalism and personal violence (while racism is never mentioned in the cases of the former, I’ve researched numerous Christchurch business owners and none have had this problem; Lyttelton Times 17/3/1884: 3, Star (Christchurch) 15/11/1887: 2). There were also a surprising number of examples of Chinese people taking other Chinese people to court, including for theft and the failure to pay wages (for example, Press 20/12/1883: 3, Lyttelton Times 17/3/1884: 3).

Although much everyday racism may have gone unreported, this article is clear evidence of it. Image: Star (Christchurch) 24/9/1888: 2.

The underlying causes of the racism against the Chinese community are hard to pin down (Fairburn 2003). Brian Moloughney and John Stenhouse (1999) have argued that it born of the growth in colonial nationalism witnessed in New Zealand in the late 19th century, and particularly a desire to keep New Zealand white and preserve the ‘integrity’ of this South Pacific paradise. Several things about Moloughney and Stenhouse’s article are striking, one being the parallels between the nationalist views expressed in 1890s New Zealand and those that have been heard in Trumpian America. The other is how these views were promoted by otherwise liberal thinkers, including both William Pember Reeves and Robert Stout (Gattey 2018, Stenhouse 2018). The anti-Chinese views of these men, and others like them, were widely published in newspapers in the late 19th century, and racism against Chinese people seems to have been tacitly accepted (although not always without protest). This would not have been an easy world for Chin Sing and his compatriots to occupy, and the on-going fan-tan raids (and the publicity around them) are just one example of the difficulties they would have faced, one that was both a result of the attitudes of the time and contributed to the continuation of those views in 19th century society.

Katharine Watson

References

Fairburn, Miles, 2003. “What best explains the discrimination against the Chinese in New Zealand, 1860s-1950s?” Journal of New Zealand Studies 2/3: 65-85.

Gattey, Emma M., 2018. “Sir Robert Stout as Freethinker and Eugenics Enthusiast.” In Paul, Diane B., Stenhouse, John and Spencer, Hamish G. (eds.), Eugenics at the Edges of Empire: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Springer International Publishing. Pp. 195-218.

Globe. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Ip, Manying, 2015, “Chinese – the first immigrants”, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/chinese/page-2 (accessed 10 August 2023).

Lyttelton Times. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Moloughney, Brian and Stenhouse, John, 1999. “‘Drug-besotten, sin-begotten fiends of filth’: New Zealanders and the Oriental other, 1850-1920.” New Zealand Journal of History 33(1): 43-64.

Press. Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Star (Christchurch). Available at: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.

Stenhouse, John, 2018. “Undesirable Bill’s undesirable bill: William Pember Reeves and Eugenics in Late-Victorian New Zealand.” In Paul, Diane B., Stenhouse, John and Spencer, Hamish G. (eds.), Eugenics at the Edges of Empire: New Zealand, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Springer International Publishing. Pp. 129-152.

Wises New Zealand Post Office Directories. Available via ancestry.com.