Christ Church graduate John Robert Godley was a key figure in the establishment of an Anglican settlement on New Zealand’s South Island, and was responsible for naming the city at the heart of the new settlement ‘Christchurch’. From Godley’s day until the 1940s the universities of Oxford and Canterbury remained closely linked. Reinvigorating the connection today the Wakefield Scholarship allows Canterbury students to spend a year studying at Godley’s old college
From Christ Church to Christchurch
20 November 2023
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Augustus C. Pugin (Artist), scene inside Christ Church
William Combe, A History of the University of Oxford, its Colleges, Halls, and Public Buildings, 2 vols (London: Rudolph Ackermann, 1814)
University of Canterbury Library
The two volumes of William Combe’s 200-year-old History of the University of Oxford contain striking aquatint engravings, each of which was individually finished by hand. They were a gift to the University of Canterbury by Blackwell Publishing in memory of the founders of that publishing house and of Clifford Collins, University Librarian from 1934 until 1971. The Oxford University college depicted here, Christ Church, has an intimate connection with Canterbury and its university, not least because of the role one of its graduates played in the origins of the city of Christchurch.
The hand-embroidered shamrocks on John Robert Godley’s waistcoat evoke his Anglo-Irish roots, and it was his relief proposal to the British Crown during the Irish famine that brought Godley to the attention of New Zealand Company founder, Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Their discussions in 1847 gave rise to the Canterbury settlement.
The charismatic Godley arrived in Christchurch in April 1850, with his wife and son, and presided over Canterbury’s turbulent first two years. The family returned to Europe in December 1852, where Godley died nine years later, from tuberculosis, aged 47. Godley’s descendants have maintained their connections to Christchurch, and this black broadcloth waistcoat (dating from around 1848) is part of a set of Godley’s clothes bequeathed to the Museum by his daughter, Frances, in 1956.
Black broadcloth single-breasted waistcoat worn by John Robert Godley circa 1848
Canterbury Museum, EC 157.1
Want to know more?
- Peter S. Field, 'William Combe, A History of the University of Oxford', in Treasures of the University of Canterbury Library, ed. by Chris Jones & Bronwyn Matthews with Jennifer Clement (Christchurch: CUP, 2011)
- Gerald Hensley, ‘Godley, John Robert – Biography’, in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (updated 1 September 2010)
