NZ newsSouth Canterbury LifeTimaru Civic Trust: 111 Church St

​This home at 111 Church St, Timaru, is the subject of this week’s Timaru Civic Trust column.
Photo: AIMAN AMERUL MUNER / THE TIMARU HERALD

A brick cottage at 111 Church St may hold one of Timaru’s clearest stories about how a building boom ends.

Henry Thornton bought the Yorktown section in 1875. Valuation evidence suggests the house was standing by about 1879. No surviving contract proves he built it, but it rose on his land, during his ownership, in the material that defined his trade.

Thornton arrived at Lyttelton from Durham in 1860 with his wife, Mary Ann, and their children Catherine, 10, Thomas, 6, Matthew Henry, 2, and baby Mary Ann. A bricklayer, stonemason and builder, he became one of Timaru’s leading contractors.

His work included the Old Bank Hotel, Timaru Courthouse, Town Hall, Bank St synagogue and James Bruce’s flour, oatmeal and sawmill complex in Grey St, now Mill St.

The 1870s boom was fuelled by overseas borrowing for immigration, railways, roads and public works. When international credit contracted in 1878, indebted businesses and landowners were exposed and construction slowed.

In February 1879, Thornton offered 2½ acres between Church and Elizabeth streets for sale. By July, his estate was in the hands of trustees James Bruce and Francis Benjamin Greenup. Auctioneers advertised his draught horses, drays, harnesses, timber, scaffolding and contractor’s plant.

These were more than possessions for Thornton. They were the machinery of his livelihood.

Thornton was still contracted to complete Bruce’s large mill, giving Bruce a direct interest in his affairs. This places the mill contract close to Thornton’s collapse, although no evidence proves that one building alone caused it.

By July 1879, Mary Ann was 50. Catherine was around 29, Thomas 25, Matthew Henry 21 and the youngest Mary Ann about 19 or 20. They were adults, although we do not know who still lived at home.

By January 1881, Thornton was applying for discharge from bankruptcy. Later that year he defaulted on the mortgage over the Church St property, and the National Bank took control through Bruce and Greenup.

​He was not alone. In November 1879, about 50 unemployed Timaru building tradesmen petitioned the Government for work.

Bruce’s original Waitangi Mills, which Thornton had been contracted to build in 1878, burned on 21 May 1881. The fire did not cause Thornton’s bankruptcy; his estate was already in trustees’ hands. Only the smokestack and part of the boiler house survived. Bruce designed a larger replacement, built by Thomas Machin in 1881-82. Today’s mill at 4 Mill Street is Machin’s replacement, not Thornton’s building.

The bank later rented the cottage to undertaker Samuel Peake and sold it in 1893 to widow Magdalene Elder. It later passed to former mayor John James Grandi, then painter Richard Edwards.

Thornton moved to Auckland. When he died in 1901, his obituary remembered a hard-working builder who had once employed a large staff and erected some of Timaru’s most substantial buildings.

The Courthouse and Old Bank Hotel tell the story of his success. The cottage tells the harder part: how a family arrived, a builder rose, credit contracted and a town reached the limits of borrowed confidence.

The boom ended. The bricks stayed. I stand at the gate and look at the 111 Church St facade and wonder what conversations went on in this home, and how they rode the financial stresses. Hopefully there were many happy memories there too.

The house at 111 Church St is expected to go on the market in September. The Timaru Civic Trust thanks Rebecca Smith for sharing her research into the property’s history and historic title, which formed the foundation of this column.

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The Timaru Herald