“To tell you is a great task, for I can assure you it is a most awful country,” wrote James Boot from Christchurch, New Zealand in letter to his parents in Nottingham, England in June, …
On the north east corner of Cathedral Square, the Commercial Hotel, owned by John Etherden Coker (1832 – 1894) was opened in 1863. The name Warner’s was not used until the hotel’s…
The first part of the twentieth century was the heyday for the department store in New Zealand. The iconic department store, Hays, was a ‘household name’ in Christchurch from its incept…
Conan Doyle’s fascination with the supernatural brought him to New Zealand in 1920 – where he met a special terrier named ‘Darkie’ who he believed had mystical powers. In th…
“In the bay in which we landed, we found two or three miserable primitive Maori cabins, inhabited by half-a-dozen helpless old creatures and a few diseased children — forming a pa named Rapaki.”…