My Taranaki Anniversary Day 5

The next street to the south of Gill Street is the main street of the city (and the longest for a long way of any city), Devon Street, named after the Earl of Devon, who was the Chairman of the Plymouth Company Board.

 

The next street, or half of it, was also named after him. Courtenay Street remembers his family. Henry Courtenay was the liveliest of his family, being interested in all sorts of projects for the improvement of his land and his tenants and their part of the country.

 

The other end of Courtenay Street is called Powderham Street, after the family castle south of Exeter.

 

Powderham today with the present Earl (from the website)

After that we have a street again divided in two halves, and again, like Courtney and Powderham streets, a part of the one-way system. The western half is called Vivian Street.

 

Hussey Vivian was a Waterloo veteran. As a junior general he was credited by some with having led a charge by his dragoons, against strict instructions from the Duke of Wellington, and in this way saved the day for the allied armies.

 

A scene from the diorama at Waterloo today

By 1841 Vivian was an MP and a minister, in charge of the "big guns" department of the army, and of the surveyors department, which was originally set up to map the ground where guns were expected to be used.

 

The other half of the street is called Leach Street, but Edmund Leach is a bit of a mystery.

 

Then comes Lemon Street, named after Sir Charles Lemon, a Cornish mine-owner, who was also a company board member, and MP.

 

Lemon was a well-educated man, and interested in science.  He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a friend of Hooker, the great naturalist. He was worried about the diseases which afflicted his miners, and helped to found the Royal Statistical Society, which was able to virtually begin the science of epidemiology.

 

Lemon's nephew was Fox-Talbot, the photographic pioneer, one of whose early shots was of a tree on Lemon's estate which Hooker had brought back from his travels.

 

I am very proud to have such a man as the namesake of the street I live in. Lemon also had a rhododendron named after him, and I believe it is high time our council encouraged residents to plant Sir Charles Lemon trees in their properties and on their berms.

 

After Lemon Street we come to Pendarves Street. Jack Pendarves was also an MP and a member of the Company Board. From records of the electioneering of those days it is clear that these men were colleagues and friends who could work together well, and who co-operated on progressive projects of a variety of kinds, not just on founding New Plymouth.

 

The fact that their names come up in street names in Wellington too shows they were busy in the New Zealand Company at the same time.