Kirton Place

The availability and cost of housing has, in recent years, become one of the most talked about issues facing the country. In the early 1970s New Plymouth was the focus of some political grandstanding on the same problem.   

The matter came to head in July 1971 when then Labour Party spokesman on housing, Bill Fraser, described the state of some of the housing in the city as a “shantytown”. Local reporters were taken to a run-down cottage on Ocean View Parade where a family of six were living in a dilapidated cottage riddled with mould and infested with rats. Their income of $50 a week was too high to qualify for a state house.

In response to the problem the National Government promptly announced that 15 new state houses would be built, and two new streets formed. Kirton Place, a very short cul-de-sac in Westown, was one of them.

This small sub-division was part of a larger government housing scheme for the suburb. Much of the land surrounding Clawton Street was once owned by the Roman Catholic Church. However, when the church purchased the old Westown golf course on Tukapa Street and built Francis Douglas Memorial College, the land previously earmarked for a school became available for state housing. 

Kirton Place was named after a street in Plymouth with the same name. Nigel Overton, a curator at the Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery in England, reports that the origin of the name is unknown. He speculates that it may be linked to the small Devonshire town of Crediton which was once called Kirton.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.

Related plans:

Elliot Road District (1901) DP1736, ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)

Section 28 Fitzroy District DP6808, ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)

Kirton Place Subdivision DP10573, ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)