Tawa Historical Society Incorporated

The Tawa Historian

Newsletter #39 – November 2016

Dear Members and Friends,

The Memorial Project
Firstly, I have today (5 November 2016) received the good news that we have been granted all the funding we need to go ahead with building the Tawa Memorial at the northern end of Oxford Street in central Tawa. Our architect, Callum McKenzie, will now speak to the contractor to ascertain whether the Memorial can be built in time for it to be used for the first time on ANZAC Day, 2017. A final amount of $81,671.00 will be made available to us from the Lottery Grants Board’s Environment and Heritage fund.

We are delighted that, in their communication to us, they made the following comment:

It was noted that The Committee has chosen to fully fund your request. It considered the project to have strong alignment with Lottery Grants Board outcomes and the Committee’s cultural heritage priorities and funding criteria. The Committee thanks you for applying to the Lottery Environment and Heritage Committee and wishes you every success with the project.

This news is the culmination of work which commenced as far back as 2008, and has involved co-operation with other groups. In particular we are grateful to the Tawa RSA and the Tawa Community Board who have been on much of this journey with us. We are grateful to our donors – originally the Mana Community Grants Foundation and the Tawa Community Board, and more recently the Linden Tennis Club, the Tawa Lions Club, the Tawa RSA Poppy Fund, and Gordon Mygind.

We are hoping that it will be possible to have the Memorial dedicated and unveiled on 22 April 2017 at 10.00am. Members might want to keep that time and date free so that they can attend.

Duval Grove
Secondly, a long-standing puzzle has, I think, been solved. We have not been able for many years to determine the origin of the Tawa street name of Duval Grove. Recently a long standing Tawa resident, Rod Henden, suggested that Duval Grove was named after Maurice de Harven Duval, a Belgian architect who worked in Timaru from about 1876 to 1895, when he returned to Belgium. He designed many of South Canterbury’s stone churches (mostly Catholic, but some Anglican), and was well known to Archbishop Redwood because of his architectural and other work for the Catholic Church. It seems highly likely that “he is our man”.

Kind regards,