Cannon Street sign (2024). Mike Gooch. Word on the street image collection.
Cannon Street sign (2024). Mike Gooch. Word on the street image collection.
Cannon Street in Westown links Magnolia Drive and Wallath Road. As with many other roads in the area, the formation of this street was an indirect consequence of the well-known horticultural firm Duncan & Davies leaving their Westown site for Brixton.
The other player in the story is Riddick Bros & Still, an energetic construction company established in by Ray and Ted Riddick along with Wilson (Willie) Still. They built bridges, pools, commercial and residential buildings as well developing streets throughout Taranaki between 1947 and 1977. A list of their projects in Willie and Rosie Still’s 2011 book “Still Building” runs to 12 pages, including the Vivian Street Viaduct, New Plymouth Central Baptist Church and the Tasman Hotel (now Richmond Apartments).
Magnolia Drive, leading off Wallath Road and once home to Duncan & Davies’ ‘stock beds’, was the first part of this Westown subdivision. In the early 1970s, with 19 sections formed, attention turned to extending Magnolia Drive to the north and forming a new road to connect with Wallath Road.
In a stroke of good fortune, one the company’s directors, accountant John Glasgow, happened to own the neighbouring property and agreed to sell his employers five acres. Together with the land they had already purchased, Riddick Bros & Still were able to forge ahead with the project, 33 sections in all.
Sadly, Glasgow did not live to see this new development on the nearby land. He died suddenly while in Auckland on 13 November 1974, aged only 43. Glasgow had been appointed chairman of the Taranaki Polytechnic Council the previous year and also recently elected deputy chairman of the Taranaki Harbours Board.
The name chosen for the new street was yet another one simply picked from a council list of street names from old Plymouth in Devon. The original Cannon Street, pleasingly located opposite Gun Lane, is nestled alongside the Devonport Royal Dockyard, its name celebrating an important piece of naval artillery.
This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.
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