The recent story of the Williams Development on Marine Pde and confusion by the New Zealand Herald reporter about its location in relation to Keppel St, is good time to bring to light a little history of early New Brighton. Look on the old adv picture below this post.
The newspaper clip from 1896 advertises four 1x full acre sections in Sparshott Street for 45 pounds each. Sparshott St is actually Keppel St, but before I explain that contradiction, the Williams Corp paid $3,050,0000 for the 3050 sq metres comprising the section of land they have just sold off the plans the 37 townhouses, and I believe that total space is about three quarters of one acre.
The real question though is why Sparshott St disappeared from the New Brighton landscape ? The answer can be traced back to a special meeting of the New Brighton Council in 1907 when Harry Hawker came up with a brain wave to change New Brighton Street names to those of British sea captains between the 1700 and 1900s, and show a bit of patriotism to the mother country while highlighting the coastal nautical theme for the suburb.
Sparshott St took its name from Lucy Sparshott who emigrated to New Zealand in 1859 (died 1918) wife of James Hawkes the developer of much of central New Brighton in the 1870s including donating land for St Faiths church, and then went bankrupt.
Not that a local link mattered, and the all-male member Council voted to rename it Keppel St after Augustus Viscount (died 1786) a former British navy admiral with a career blighted by a few scandals, and one time faced a court martial. A stack of other streets got renamed including Beatty, Blake (died 1657), Drake (Sir Francis died 1596), Bridge, Fleming (Admiral in the war against Napoleon) Halsey, Hawke, and so on.
Most present day New Brightonians will have no clue about the significance of these names and will ask the obvious question.