Ashburton Borough Centenary/Foreword

It has been an absorbing interest to compile this booklet and live again through the tussock years.

What of the future? The Council is enthusiastic about making 1978 as memorable a year as is 1878: the re-development of Baring Square will be a fitting tangible tribute. All citizens are united in wanting something worthwhile accomplished — new buildings or facilities, houses, gardens and streets in tidy order and in October and November, celebration of our hundred years of progress.

Only a large volume could have done justice to those who guided that progress and the reader is asked to bear with us through our “diary of events”. Humble apologies are tendered to the cultural organisations and service groups that have not received due recognition. Their work is immeasurable, their labours so often not of the dramatic type that reaches the news. Perhaps they are well epitomized by the activities of a branch of Toc H formed in Ashburton in 1938. Its origins were in the wartime armed forces and its purpose fellowship and service for which thanks and publicity were shunned. (Its first project was funding the shifting of the rose gardens in the Domain). In 1940, the Toc H free Hospital Library was stocked with public donations of books and helped by the Hospital Board. As we repeat, “What of the future” it is warming to realize that, although Toc H as such is now locally defunct, the books continue to be distributed two nights a week by the remnant few.

For those who would wish to know more of the Borough's Century, we suggest you read the Canterbury volume of “Cyclopedia of New Zealand”, John Brown’s “History of Ashburton”, Dr. Scotter’s “Ashburton” and Emily Bayliss’s “Tinwald”. In the compiling of this booklet the files of “Ashburton Guardian” and minutes of the Borough Council were checked against these books.

We thank the author, Mrs Beatrice Silverwood, for the research and writing, Councillor Russell Anstiss, Town Clerk Scotty Watson, Librarian Miss Jill Watson for their help, the Historical Society, Mr Peter Hickman, the Library and “Ashburton Guardian” for photographs, and Borough Council Staff, Misses Helen Langdon and Anne Harcourt who typed the manuscript.

We wish a happy Centennial Season to all and may the Borough flourish throughout its second hundred years.