Riversdale Drive

Riversdale Drive in Merrilands follows the course of the Waiwhakaiho River from Timandra Street to Brixham Place.

A plan drawn up in 1969, forming the first part of what is now Riversdale Drive and Kennedy Place, was the beginning of a series of subdivisions that would eventually complete the road we know today. However, at this time the road was called Airedale Street, following a naming policy that the New Plymouth City Council titled “Ships, steamers with New Plymouth or Taranaki association”.

The Airedale was an iron steamship built in England in 1857 and at one stage used for transporting British troops during the Taranaki Wars as well as evacuating women and children from New Plymouth to Nelson in 1860. On 15 February 1871 the Airedale founded on a reef just north of the Waitara River.

The link with Waitara is important as it is the reason the name of the road was changed. Council records indicate that in 1972 the Waitara Borough Council chose the name Airedale Street for a new cul-de-sac in the town. It appears that progress on New Plymouth’s Airedale Street had been slow so perhaps the city council was comfortable ‘gifting’ the name to Waitara (where it became Airedale Place) and replacing it with Riversdale Drive.

The new street name they chose was that given by the Barnitt family to their farm in this part of the Waiwhakaiho Valley. William James Heslop Barnitt was born in Yorkshire in 1841 and emigrated from England in the 1880s, settling with his family in Taranaki.

Known locally as Heslop, he purchased a block of land between what was then Old Hospital Road (now Mangorei Road) and the Waiwhakaiho River, naming the farm Riversdale. Heslop Barnitt died in 1936 and his obituary described him as “of retiring disposition” yet “deeply esteemed by many friends for unfailing courtesy and kindness”.  

The former farmland has now been almost completely filled with residential housing. However, Te Ngahere Historic Reserve and a walkway alongside the Waiwhakaiho River serve as a reminder of what the valley looked like in the past.    

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.

Related items:

Taranaki DP5244 Sheet 1 (1930), ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)

Taranaki DP6090 Sheet 1 (1944), ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)

Taranaki DP6162 Sheet 1 (1944), ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)

Taranaki DP10052 Sheet 1 (1969), ICS Pre 300,000 Cadastral Plan Index (Imaged by LINZ)

Decision deferred in sale of land to quarry company (Taranaki Daily News 4 July 1944)

Committee approves land transactions (Taranaki Daily News 7 July 1944)

Mark Heslop Barnitt Obituary (Daily News 26 December 1963)