Topic: New Brighton
Topic type:
The Christchurch suburb of New Brighton
Descendants of the first English settlers have said that the name was conferred on the spur of the moment when William Guise Brittan (1809-1876), then head of the Waste Lands Board, paid a visit to the run, supposedly on 16 December 1860. As he drew near he was recognised. One of the pioneers, William Free, hastily chalked ‘New Brighton’ on a piece of wood and nailed it over the sawpit where he was working, probably because Stephen Brooker, another settler, had been born in Brighton.
When the settlement was founded in 1860, it was expected that it would be a second port.
New Brighton is first mentioned in The Lyttelton Times in 1862. The area did not become a borough until 1896.
Named officially in 1953.
The Maori name for the area that became New Brighton was O-rua-paeroa: an east wind blowing along the shore.
