Dorset Avenue

You would be forgiven for assuming that Dorset Avenue in New Plymouth was named after the county in England. However, instead it was named after a person, Edward Dorset, who owned title to the Dartmouth estate, from which that part of Westown was developed.

Arriving in Wellington in 1840, on the ship London from London, he was already well connected locally. His brother, Jack, was a well-known doctor who had arrived with Colonel Wakefield as the surgeon on the New Zealand Company vessel the Tory.

Edward Dorset engaged in business as a coastal trader. He was involved in shipping a consignment consisting of flour, salt, meat and lard from New Plymouth to Wellington on the Carbon in May 1845.

By 1848, he was offering freight or passage to Taranaki from Wellington on the fast cutter Fly.

In 1850, he became one of the first trustees of the New Plymouth Savings Bank.

According to the Taranaki Herald of July 1853, Dorset was one of a group, publicly requesting that Isaac Newton Watt allow himself to be nominated as a candidate to represent the town of New Plymouth in the Provincial Council.

Dorset promoted the growing of English flax for export, declaring that the native product was rendered unsuitable because of the high price demanded by Māori. By March 1855, we find him among a list of signatories, requesting that a public meeting be called to consider the then unprotected state of the settlement.

Dorset died at his home on 1 October 1887, and is buried at Te Hēnui cemetery.

The Taranaki Herald declared: "No more shall we see his familiar form in our streets, no more of the amusing gossip of the sporting days of old."

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.

Related plan:

Dartmoor Extension No. 1 DP2558, ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)