We can stop calling it Muntsbury
Huntsbury celebrates its 100th anniversary next weekend. Will Harvie profiles the Port Hills neighbourhood with a colourful history and an almost complete rebuild.
Huntsbury has a long and memorable history with huts. It’s hard to see today because much of the neighbourhood is characterised by mansions and earthquake rebuilds with expansive views.
Back in the day, however, Huntsbury had huts – lots of huts.
The first huts came in 1910, when the Cashmere Sanatorium was opened on the western slopes of Huntsbury spur. At the time, the best medical treatment for patients with tuberculosis was described as ‘‘open air’’.
Many patients lived in huts – about 9 square metres – by themselves. The doors and windows in these huts were permanently open.
‘‘The sanatorium was a very bracing place,’’ recalled Sonja Davies, the late activist, Labour Party MP and sanatorium resident.
‘‘We were all very hardy and tough and slept with our shack fronts wide open. One morning I woke to see snow on my blanket.
‘‘We slept this way right through winter, banked by two or three scalding hot water bottles.
‘‘This spartan existence actually seemed to help quite a lot of people,’’ she told a sanatorium historian.
Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection of the lungs and getting patients above the smog of Christchurch and exposed to the cruel north-easterlies and wet southerlies was best practice, although many died.
Antibiotics largely eliminated tuberculosis after World War II and the huts were phased out from 1950. The sanatorium and associated Coronation Hospital buildings were closed in 1991 and the land was sold for housing.
Today those lands and indeed all of Huntsbury show the unmistakable impact of the 2011 earthquake, when it earned the name Muntsbury.
There are still sections emptied by demolitions and broken retaining walls, but also many shining rebuilds and repairs.
Small-town vibe
Anna Siggs-Webster’s home is no hut and ‘‘felt like an old farmhouse’’ when they bought it about 10 years ago.
The house was quake repaired and expanded and has striking views to the northeast over St Martins and the Rapaki Track. On clear days, they can see the snow-capped Kaiko¯ uras.
Every house on Huntsbury has a different view, she says, and the Christchurch inversion layer means the winter temperature at her place can be 5 degrees Celsius warmer than on the flat, as measured by her car’s thermometer.
While there is no Huntsbury village with shops or a pub, there is a strong family-oriented, smalltown community vibe, which she helps organise when not homeschooling her three kids.
These efforts included a community celebration in the amazing Huntsbury water reservoir.
On February 22, 2011, it was the city’s principal drinking water storage facility with capacity for 35,000 cubic metres. Later that day, it was empty. All that water ‘‘disappear[ed] into the cracked hills’’, according to the infrastructure rebuilder Scirt.
It turns out there was an unknown ‘‘shear zone’’ – a seismic fault – directly under the reservoir, which was a ‘‘surprise’’.
Scirt designed and built two replacement reservoirs, one each side of the fault. The two reservoirs can move independently next time.
Between the brutalist concrete tanks is a flat grass area worth half a rugby field. It’s well suited to community events, including a party and film night attended by more than 100 people a year ago.
The space will be used again for next weekend’s 100th anniversary celebrations.
It will also likely feature in two walking tours of the community hosted by Mike Yardley, a columnist for The Press and a Huntsbury resident for 15 years.
‘‘I absolutely love it,’’ he says. ‘‘There’s a great sense of community. You feel slightly removed from the urban hustle, despite only being a 10-minute drive away from the city centre.
‘‘The native birdlife is astounding, the winter frosts are few . . . and having the great playground of the Port Hills on your doorstep is deeply cherished,’’ he says.
So many stories to tell
All this makes Huntsbury an expensive suburb. ‘‘Million dollar views’’ chumps one real estate listing on Trade Me.
Another calls for ‘‘Enquiries over $1.2 million’’ for a fivebedroom, 282sqm new home zoned for Cashmere High School.
A 785sqm empty section with great views is offered at $305,000. Lower down, almost on the flat, a 210sqm, three-bedroom house is under offer somewhere adjacent to
$619,000. That house overlooks one of the rare water fountains in suburban Christchurch, plonked into the turn zone of a cul-de-sac. It still works.
The other huts of Huntsbury were built mostly by returned servicemen, says local history enthusiast and parent Melanie Opie. Referred to as ‘‘hutters’’, ‘‘hutties’’ and the ‘‘hut people’’, they erected temporary homes on their land while they built their permanent homes.
‘‘These people were grafters – working during the day and slowly building their homes, bit by bit, as time and money allowed,’’ Opie says.
Opie’s own house was built in
1925, the second on the hill, and was originally just 80sqm. Apparently the house suffered many broken windows when neighbours dynamited rocks to develop their properties.
Some existing residents did not admire the hut people and complained to the council. Some of those huts became garden sheds and may still exist, quakes allowing. There’s even a story that some sanatorium huts wound up in a nudist camp, though The Press was unable to confirm this.
The city council restored a sanatorium hut and it can be found at the end of Kimbolton Lane, which is signposted as private.
The wee parking lot nearby on Major Aitken Dr was the site of the sanatorium morgue, says longtime Huntsbury resident David Drayton.
He has lived on the the spur for five decades and was deeply involved in fundraising for the Huntsbury Community Centre from the early 1970s. He has been involved with its operations since.
Opened in 1975, it’s a ‘‘beautiful building’’, he says, and it survived the quakes with aplomb. The water reservoir is across the street. It’s being strengthened and revitalised now, under Drayton’s direction.
‘‘I was born on Cashmere Hill, married on the hill, and there was only one place I wanted to live,’’ he says.
Drayton and his wife, Sally, bought an empty section for £1500, built a home and raised a family.
‘‘It was a very friendly place. Everybody knew everybody,’’ he says.
Which sounds like what Anna Siggs-Webster and Melanie Opie and their generation of parents are pulling off as well.
There are a hundred other Huntsbury stories to tell – how native timber from the hill wound up in the Anglican cathedral in the Square; how the clay quarries and brickworks at the base of the hill shaped Christchurch; the poem James K Baxter wrote about the sanatorium morgue . . .
Get along to anniversary events to hear – and tell – some of them.