When you are starting to find your way around New Plymouth, and you look at a map, one of the first things you notice: street names. Some are familiar, like Hobson and Molesworth, but others are not, like Pendarves and Lemon.
The European settlement of New Plymouth was planned by a group of people who had close connections with Devon and Cornwall.
They were all well off and well educated, and were leaders of their own communities. They were also intensely interested in the idea of improving life for their fellow-citizens by organising emigration to other countries, like the USA and Canada.
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| John Lambton, Earl of Durham |
The man who had the ideas was Edward Gibbon Wakefield, but the real leader of the team was John Lambton, Earl of Durham. Lambton was a MP, and a friend and colleague of Charles Buller.
In 1837, Lambton was sent to Canada as Govenor-General, charged with sorting out the Canadians, who were becoming very dissatisfied with the London government. He took Buller with him as secretary.
They wrote a report, recommending self-government for Canada, which the government adopted, and that became the model for us later.
Lambton died soon after, but Buller and Wakefield pressed on, enlisting another MP, William Molesworth, and several others from Devon and Cornwall, Jack Pendarves, Charles Lemon, and Sir Hussey Vivian.
Vivian was in charge of the ordnance department, which supplied heavy guns for the army and looked after surveying. They found a surveyor to send to prepare for the new settlement of New Plymouth.
This was Fred Carrington, who had cut his teeth surveying towns for the new electoral law passed in 1832. He was responsible for naming the streets of the new town.
So he called some of the streets after these men, who by now had formed themselves into the Plymouth Company, with the earl of Devon, Henry Courtenay, as chairman.
Here is a plan he drew from 1848:
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