Looking south down Rolleston Avenue to the Port Hills
Looking south down Rolleston Avenue to the Port Hills
[ca. 1890]
Burton Bros.
On the left is the Great Hall of Canterbury College which opened in 1882. On the right is Canterbury Museum. Both buildings were designed by Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort (1825-1898). The Museum is shown with a flèche (or slender spire). This was part of an extension to the Museum, also designed by Mountfort, and was opened in June 1877. At this time the church authorities were building the Cathedral and the flèche was designed to emphasise the link between the two buildings. By 1957 it was condemned as unsafe. The Ministry of Works report said that "the beams on the building trusses supporting the spire were bowed, joints had opened and above the roof line weathering decay and borer infestation had left the structure in a perilous condition." At the time it was intended that the spire be rebuilt. (See The Press, 31 Aug. 1957, p. 12)
File Reference CCL-KPCD01-0053
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