The main artery

Joseph Johnson

Mark Banfield, aka the Elvis butcher.

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More than just the main drag, Colombo Street's eight kilometres are filled with people, businesses, and lots of variety.

Connecting the city with the Port Hills, Colombo Street is one of Christchurch's best-known and most diverse streets. Shops share street frontage with businesses, churches, homes and a school, ensuring the city's main artery pulses daily with thousands of businesspeople, commuters and shoppers.

Is Colombo Street the longest, straightest, main inner-city street in the Southern Hemisphere? At more than eight kilometres long, that seems plausible. Yet, no one, not even Google, could confirm or deny the fact. What we do know is our city's main road divides Christchurch into east and west, running from the hills in the south to the inner northern suburbs. Stretching from Dyers Pass Rd to Edgeware Rd, Colombo St offers an overtly eclectic mix of almost everything imaginable.

"I really liked the idea of having No 1 Colombo St," says Wendy Meerts, who runs her property investment business, The Helmore Group, from home. Being first in the street (at the roundabout where Colombo St, Dyers Pass Rd, Cashmere Rd and Centaurus Rd meet) was part of the attraction that led Wendy to buy the house about a year ago.

"Everybody knows the street. It's the main street of Christchurch," she says.

Named after a colonial Anglican bishop's diocese in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1850 by surveyors Joseph Thomas and Edward Jollie, Colombo St is a snapshot of life in Christchurch. Scattered among the residential homes are small hubs of independent traders and a thriving business centre. Linger long enough and it's possible to hear any of the languages of the 140-plus cultural groups that have made this city their home. 

"It's a wonderful community," the principal of Thorrington School, Paul Armitage, says.

The primary school, which celebrated its golden jubilee this year, draws more than 75 per cent of its pupils from the surrounding area.

"It does make it pretty chaotic at the front gate sometimes, but everyone knows us as 'the school at the bottom of the hill'," Paul says.

It's close enough to stroll to the Christchurch City Council's South Library in Beckenham. Designed by Warren and Mahoney, the sustainable building, surrounded by a moat, uses water as its central design theme. Books and good coffee have made it a popular place to meet and relax. Its contemporary look provides the perfect counterpoint to the Malthouse theatre and costume-hire business across the road.

In 1869, The Lyttelton Times reported that Roger Deacon and William Vincent had spent more than £2000 building "one of the finest malthouses in New Zealand" to service their city brewery. However, with the merger of the country's breweries in the late 1920s, the malthouse became a grain store and then a building depot, before becoming the home of the Canterbury Children's Theatre group in 1965.

It's one of the oldest and few original buildings along this section of Colombo St, where the old is making way for the new.  

"It is a pity," says butcher Mark Banfield, of Banfields of Beckenham, who recently saw his 100-year-old building bulldozed to create Beckenham Central. 

"My old shop had been a butchery since 1906 and, in an ideal world, it would be nice to keep, but the reality is that the new premises are great. There's good parking, which is good for business." 

Mark became known as 'the Elvis butcher' after photos of him dressed as the famous crooner, taken at the Melbourne Cup, appeared in a local newspaper. 

"From then on, everyone started bringing me Elvis memorabilia; the old shop was just full of it." 

But Elvis has not left the building entirely. In a nod (and hip swivel) to tradition, posters of Elvis decorate the walls of Mark's new shop.  

Next door at The Cupcake Collection, Fiona Fidow has a stream of regulars popping in for her freshly baked and elegantly iced cupcakes. Fiona makes more than 1000 of the miniature cakes a week. Cupcake art makes this yummy mummy popular with her children's friends and neighbouring businesses. Hairdressers working two doors away say they have to restrain themselves when the aroma of the warm baby cakes drifts across the car park. 

On Avenues' visit, a client came into the shop seeking solace.

"I've just come back from a Weight Watchers meeting; I need something to cheer me up."

 *Read more in the November issue*