Graves Street (Eltham)

By the early 1900s the township of Eltham was growing rapidly, with new streets being laid out and subdivisions surveyed. Several landowners had streets named after them. One was Herbert Graves.

Herbert Phillip Henry Graves, a bank officer in Napier, moved to Hāwera in the mid-1890s with his wife Emma, to manage the local branch of the Bank of New South Wales. A few years later he bought land in Eltham and left the bank to work for himself as a real estate and commission agent.

Graves had a financial involvement in a brickworks manufacturer near Pātea and decided to sell his Eltham property in 1904. Prior to selling, he had the land surveyed for a planned subdivision. His subdivision included a new road, to be called Stapp Street and named after Emma’s father, Colonel Charles Stapp, who had fought in Crimea and was later an officer in various New Zealand militias.

In 1905 the Eltham Borough Council bought a strip of the land previously owned by Herbert Graves and, in 1910, formed the road that became Graves Street. Stapp Street was never developed.

Herbert and Emma Graves lived in Camberwell Road in Hāwera for some years, then moved to Christchurch in the 1920s. Sadly, only a few days after settling there, Herbert Graves fell ill. He died, aged 61, in July 1925. Emma Graves died in 1931.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.

Related plan:

Taranaki DP2215 Sheet 1 Graves Street: ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)