My Taranaki Anniversary Day 6

Streets in new Plymouth that run away from the coast, and named by Carrington on his original map, are much less systematic.

 

Captain Liardet (Puke Ariki photo)

One of the main ones is Liardet Street, named after the first Company representative, Captain Liardet, who was hurt in an accident soon after his arrival and had to be sent back to the UK.

 

Cutfield was another settler leader commemorated in this way.

 

Another north-south street remembers William Hobson, first Governor of New Zealand, while Eliot Street is named after one of the prominent Cornish mine-owning families.

 

Carrington Street was Fred's only self-advertisement, and its parallel road was named for Queen Victoria.

 

Mount Edgcumbe is the name of a hill on the Cornwall side of Plymouth Sound, but it is also the title of a prominent landowning family in the district.

 

Along the right bank of the Te Henui River is Baring Terrace, named for Baring Brothers, the famous London bankers, who were part of the group of young men interested in the whole project of emigration from the UK.

 

And the shortest north-south street is Brown Street, after Charles "Armitage" Brown, who also died soon after arrival, but who had bought land in that locality. His son, also Charles, was later Superintendent of Taranaki towards the end of the century. Charles senior "the friend of Keats" is buried in a lonely grave on the hillside above the Taranaki Cathedral.

 

Possibly the most significant historically of these streets is on the line known as the Fitzroy Line at the eastern end of the suburb of that name.

 

The Fitzroy line was the line on the map set by Governor Robert Fitzroy as the eastern boundary of the land claimed to have been purchased by the Company from the Maori owners. West of the line could be surveyed for settlers, east of it was to remain in Maori hands. The northern end, as far as the Waiwhakaiho River, is called Fitzroy Road. The southern part has been renamed Smart Road, after one of the early settlers in the area. It is still interesting that the eastern side has little urban development, whereas there is more subdivision and housing to the west of Smart Road.



Captain Robert Fitzroy

 

At the corner of Smart Road and State Highway 3 stands the Fitzroy Pole, erected by the Maori to mark the boundary of their land.

 

Fitzroy was an interesting man: as a young naval officer, he captained the Beagle on its round-the-world journey with Darwin. He was a staunch supporter of indigenous people and that was why a left-leaning government in the UK appointed him governor. After his return to England in disgrace, because he made himself unpopular with the settlers, he was appointed to the UK weather service at Greenwich, and developed the very beginnings of meteorology, using his observations at sea as the basis. He invented the idea of drawing weather maps by linking places with the same pressure. He arranged for lighthousekeepers to telegraph reports at the same time so he could do this, and then sent cables to the fishing ports when storms were coming.

 

Very popular with fishing people, but thought mad and unscientific by politicians and scientists, he became so depressed he committed suicide.