The University of Canterbury celebrates its foundation in 1873, but the inspiration for a college of higher education in Christchurch dates back to 1848 in the aims of the Canterbury Association. The Association saw a university as being a necessary part of the social cement that would bind together their newly planned colony, and accordingly made provision for a Religious and Educational Fund that they estimated would be worth £1,000,000.
A vision for Christ-Church College
20 November 2023
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Port Lyttelton, from a sketch by Mrs Mary Townsend, 1851. The sketch is included in Canterbury Papers, published by the Canterbury Association from 1850-1859.
As early as 1850 the Association published a paper on a Scheme for the Establishment of Christ-Church College. The scheme laid out plans for a college with two departments that would cater for public school boys and young men over 17 years of age. Young men in the upper department would be required to study theology, classics, mathematics, civil engineering and agriculture, all dressed appropriately in academic cap and gown.
These grand plans were further elaborated upon in the Plan of College which described a new college built firmly on the traditions of Oxford and Cambridge. The Association was determined that “Our settlement will be provided with a good college, good schools, churches, a bishop, clergy, all those moral necessities…”
Canterbury Association Receipts for 1854, showing that the purchase and lease of land had already enabled the expenditure of over £1487 on school books and furniture.
Despite this early vision of higher education in Christchurch, the funds available simply did not match the expansive plans, and the city had to wait a further two decades before Canterbury College was formed.
