Horizon Heights

Horizon Heights is a cul-de-sac in Whalers Gate located three hundred metres east of Barrett Road.

Plans for a street on this site date back to the middle of the 1970s when an application was made to the Taranaki County Council for approval of six new street names as part of the ‘Barrett Farm Subdivision’.

Amongst the names approved by the council were four that were never used. On a diagram of the intended development, Orpheus Place is pictured running off Poplar Grove where Horizon Heights is located today. Also on the plan are two short no-exit streets attached to Orpheus Place, named Recamia Place and Kaituna Place.

The other road name not used and indeed never even formed was Duco Place, yet another cul-de-sac between what was to be Orpheus Place and Heaphy Street. In the end the only two streets formed from this original plan were Cyrus Street and Fantome Place.

New Plymouth District Council records indicate that plans for these four streets remained active until the late 1990s when a letter from surveyors McKinlay & Co. revealed that due to a combination of land contour, existing sewer lines and stormwater provisions, the original road layout was unachievable.

An application was made in 1997 – along with a new name, the Clement Subdivision – to create eight residential sections on the northern side of Poplar Grove with provision for a ‘Future Road’.

Finally, in March 2000, a report to council from the Engineer Manager recommended the approval of an 18-lot subdivision and that the ‘Future Road’ was to be named Horizon Heights.

The name was chosen simply because “there are views in all directions and the subdivision is located on the crest of a hill”.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.