CBHS Founding History

[justify][font=Trebuchet MS]CBHS FOUNDING HISTORY[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]CBHS created by The Christchurch Boys’ High School Act 1878, passed by the General Assembly (NZ Parliament) on 28 October 1878 after the 1876 dissolution of Provincial Government (1 November 1876) and  just as the City Bank of Glasgow crashed.  The provincial  (=Crown title) “waste lands” were available for ‘public-good’  institutions such as Canterbury College. The 28 acres of the Deans Riccarton farm were sold in 1918  to Canterbury College for CBHS. In return Canterbury College would legally own and manage the first CBHS site in Worcester St.[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]1877-78 global downturn in wool prices a concern for James Deans, yet there was in NZ a land boom.[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]At this time ‘Homebush’ concentrated on Merinos, sheep and horses, and the Riccarton farm was becoming a stud farm for pedigree Shorthorn cattle, Southdown, Lincoln and Border Leicester sheep as well as Middle-White Yorkshire pigs.[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]30 acres of prime Riccarton farmland was first put on the market in 1878. Sections went for 900 pounds per acre. But the overseas market crash hit NZ in November 1878 and the bonanza was over. Some of the land returned to John Deans’ hands and was later sold for as little as L 40 per quarter-acre. The big auction did, however, net the Deans L29,000.  [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]The current Deans brick farm buildings (stable, barn, cattlesheds) were built from 1883 at a cost of £2,927. All major construction was completed by 1885.[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]Eights Deans boys (sons of Edith) attended CBHS in its early days. RG was Senior Monitor in 1901.[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]On 25 March 1918 Canterbury College Board Chair Henry Dyke Acland tabled plans of two blocks of Deans land in Lower Riccarton for a playing area and the site of a new CBHS building. Acland was a conveyancing lawyer and drew up a sale and purchase agreement, and on 29 April 1918 the CC Board resolved to accept Mr Deans’ offer to sell a 26.5 acre block of land to the College for the CCBHS at the price of L475 per acre. Well-known valuer H.S. Richards reported L400 per acre to be fair value, such that the purchase was confirmed at 400 pounds, with 500 pounds accepted for a one-acre parcel on the  south side of the Avon River (=the Deans heritage area). This purchase agreement was reported to the full Canterbury College Board on 27 May 1918: 27.5 acres of former Deans Farm land on which to erect a new CBHS school building and for expansive playing fields.  On 5 November 1923 Viscount Jellicoe laid the foundation stone even as work had on construction at Straven Rd had actually started on 13 June 1923.[/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font][/justify] [justify][font=Trebuchet MS]The 27.5 acres were legally transferred from Canterbury College to CBHS (not the Department of Education) via the amendment to the Education Act 1914, steered through Parliament by The Hon. (later Sir) Terence McCombs, with the School under its own Board of Managers (under the ChCh Post-Primary Board) from 1 April 1949. Ken Gough’s 1990s research suggests that all school property was also transferred to this body. This, [i]prima facie,[/i] contradicts the School’s claim that it is the legal owner of the site. Perhaps CBHS owns the 1 acre heritage area. The nub of Gough’s argument was that the funding for CBHS was never sourced from HM Government.[/font][/justify]