Special Spots of Living Springs: The Burnside Quarries

As you may or may not know, I have recently joined the Living Springs team. Not only am I new to Living Springs, I am also new to New Zealand. My family and I moved here from the Netherlands. Discovering the gems this area has to offer has been amazing.

In the coming months I will be exploring the, sometimes undiscovered, Special Spots of Living Springs. Will you join me on my quest to find the most special, beautiful or just quirky spots?

Did you know Living Springs has its own quarry? Known as the Burnside Quarries (there are two), these quarries were amongst the first to supply building stone to the new city of Christchurch. The quarries were worked by William and Samuel Hall, of Governors Bay, who leased the site from the property owner, Paul Hodgson. You can still see the markings on the rock where the quarrymen wedged their metal bars into cracks to break off slabs of stone.

The Hall brothers sold much of their stone locally but also supplied cut stone to building sites in Christchurch. From the quarry, the brothers transported the stone by horse and cart to the waterfront at Allandale. There was, in those days, a small jetty and the stone could be shifted onto a small flat-bottom boat at high tide. The boat then took the stone to Lyttelton, where it was moved onto a bigger boat and sailed around Godley Head, across the Sumner Bar and up the Heathcote river to Woolston. The stone was then transported by horse and cart to its final destination in Christchurch. One of those destinations was the Christchurch Cathedral.

This is the Christchurch Cathedral, soon after construction finished in 1888. Most of the stone used in the building was from Hallswell but some of it was from our own Burnside Quarry!