Shirley, New Zealand
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Shirley, sometimes referred to as Windsor, is a suburb of
Christchurch Christchurch (; ) is the largest city in the South Island and the List of cities in New Zealand, second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand. Christchurch has an urban population of , and a metropolitan population of over hal ...
,
New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
, about north-east of the
city centre A city centre, also known as an urban core, is the Commerce, commercial, Culture, cultural and often the historical, Politics, political, and geographic heart of a city. The term "city centre" is primarily used in British English, and closely e ...
. The area was used for farming from the 1850s, and subdivision started in the early 20th century, with most of the houses being built between 1950 and 1980.


History

The suburb spreads across wholly flat land which before the arrival of the first European colonists in the 1850s consisted of streams running into marshland between weathered and grassy sand dunes. Sheep and dairy cattle began to be grazed on the land within a few years of the colonists' arrival, the area being part of the Sandhills station. Land began to be bought by families of small farmers from 1863 onwards, and during the rest of the 19th century the future suburb was a district of market gardens, dairy farms and small grazing farms divided by hedgerows. A farmhouse and stables could be found along the roads every few hundred metres. As more and more land was drained it was often highly productive. One large estate was established by the very wealthy Rhodes family who chose not to live on the land but instead resided in a very large mansion in Merivale. Their estate in the district was run by managers and overseers. The district's settlers were mostly English and Scottish, but some Irish families also settled, as well as – in the 1870s – a significant group of Poles from eastern Germany. A small village of shops and one or two churches had begun to grow up by that time along what would later become known as Shirley Road. Most of the housing in Shirley was built between 1950 and 1980. A large block of state housing, known as the Emmett Block, developed on the western side of the suburb during the immediate postwar years. On the eastern side the housing was built mostly by private developers, among others Paramount Homes. The standard house built by developers was a one-storey bungalow of three or four bedrooms under a low roof in streets that sometimes followed the course of old streams, meandered in various artificial crescents, or else ended in cul-de-sacs. The socio-economic level of the suburb as a whole has always been very near the average for the suburbs of Christchurch. The poorest streets are in the Emmett Block.


Name

Susannah Buxton (née Shirley) was married to John Buxton (1806–1886). On her deathbed in 1868, she asked her son, Joseph Shirley Buxton (1833–1898), to gift land to the Methodists to build a church. Her wish was carried out and the Shirley Methodist Church was named after her. The suburb eventually became known as Shirley after the church. Subdivision started in the early 20th century, at which time the area was known as North
Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, a city in the United States * Richmond, London, a town in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town ...
. The name then changed to Windsor, until it was discussed at a meeting at the Windsor Wesleyan School that land agents indicated land sold better if the locality was called Shirley instead of Windsor. Windsor thus went out of fashion as the name of the suburb, but it lives on in names like Windsor Golf Club, Windsor Service Station, Windsor House, and Windsor School.


Demographics

Shirley, comprising the statistical areas of Shirley West and Shirley East, covers . It had an estimated population of as of with a population density of people per km2. Shirley had a population of 6,852 at the
2018 New Zealand census The 2018 New Zealand census, which took place on Tuesday 6 March 2018, was the thirty-fourth national census in New Zealand. The population of New Zealand was counted as 4,699,755 – an increase of 457,707 (10.79%) over the 2013 census. Resu ...
, an increase of 264 people (4.0%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 273 people (4.1%) since the 2006 census. There were 2,457 households, comprising 3,273 males and 3,579 females, giving a sex ratio of 0.91 males per female, with 1,317 people (19.2%) aged under 15 years, 1,452 (21.2%) aged 15 to 29, 2,940 (42.9%) aged 30 to 64, and 1,149 (16.8%) aged 65 or older. Ethnicities were 80.1% European/
Pākehā ''Pākehā'' (or ''Pakeha''; ; ) is a Māori language, Māori-language word used in English, particularly in New Zealand. It generally means a non-Polynesians, Polynesian New Zealanders, New Zealander or more specifically a European New Zeala ...
, 13.1%
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
, 5.1% Pasifika, 10.8% Asian, and 2.5% other ethnicities. People may identify with more than one ethnicity. The percentage of people born overseas was 19.9, compared with 27.1% nationally. Although some people chose not to answer the census's question about religious affiliation, 49.8% had no religion, 37.8% were
Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
, 0.9% had
Māori religious beliefs Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
, 0.9% were
Hindu Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
, 1.2% were
Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
, 0.8% were
Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
and 2.1% had other religions. Of those at least 15 years old, 909 (16.4%) people had a bachelor's or higher degree, and 1,155 (20.9%) people had no formal qualifications. 687 people (12.4%) earned over $70,000 compared to 17.2% nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 2,559 (46.2%) people were employed full-time, 816 (14.7%) were part-time, and 222 (4.0%) were unemployed.


Services

The suburb now includes one of the largest shopping malls in Christchurch, called
The Palms Shopping Centre The Palms Shopping Centre is a shopping mall located in the suburb of Shirley, Christchurch, situated from the city's CBD. The anchor by Countdown, Farmers, Reading Cinema, Chemist Warehouse and The Oasis Description The mall consists of ...
, together with the Shirley Golf Course and Bunnings Homebase. The building of the Shirley Community Centre, which was the original building of Shirley Primary School, was listed as a Category II heritage structure with
Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust; in ) is a Crown entity that advocates for the protection of Archaeology of New Zealand, ancest ...
and was badly damaged in the February
2011 Christchurch earthquake A major earthquake occurred in Christchurch on Tuesday 22 February 2011 at 12:51 p.m. New Zealand Daylight Time, local time (23:51 Coordinated Universal Time, UTC, 21 February). The () earthquake struck the Canterbury Region ...
. It has since been demolished.


Education

Shirley Intermediate School is a school for years 7 to 8 with a roll of students. It opened in 1934. Shirley Primary School covers years 1 to 6 and has a roll of students. It opened in 1916. Kingslea School is a special school and has a roll of students. Rolls are as of
Shirley Boys' High School Shirley Boys' High School (), also known as SBHS, is a single sex state (public) secondary school in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was originally situated on a 6 hectare site in the suburb of Shirley, but in April 2019 moved, along with Av ...
opened in September 1957. The site suffered from the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, and the school moved to
North New Brighton North New Brighton () is a suburb on the northern side of Christchurch city. It was originally known as North Beach and was readily accessible from Christchurch city by tram. It was renamed North New Brighton in 1953. A large sports centre an ...
in 2019. Marian College is a Catholic girls' secondary school which was in Shirley but moved to share space with Catholic Cathedral College in the central city after 2011 earthquake damage, and will move to a new site in Northcote in 2023. Quinns Road School opened on 6 July 1955 and was renamed to Hammersley Park School in 1983. It was closed in 2012 after suffering earthquake damage, since its roll had fallen from more than 200 in the early 1990s to 49.


References

{{Christchurch City, New Zealand Suburbs of Christchurch