Christchurch

The name Christchurch was adopted at the first meeting of the Canterbury Association on 27 March 1848. The reason it was chosen is not known with certainty, but it was most likely named after Christ Church, Oxford, the alma mater of some members of the association, including John Robert Godley. Christ Church college had similarities with the planned new city, including its own cathedral, the smallest in England. Many of the early colonists did not like the name, preferring instead the name Lyttelton, but the Colonists' Council resolved to stick with the name of Christchurch in 1851, because it had been used by surveyors and distinguished the settlement from the port. The Māori name for Christchurch is Ōtautahi, meaning 'the place of Tautahi'. It was adopted as the Māori name in the 1930s. Ōtautahi precisely refers to a specific site by the Avon River / Ōtākaro in Central Christchurch. …

Prior to European occupation of the modern-day greater Christchurch area, the land was originally swampland with patchworks of marshland, grassland, scrub and some patches of tall forest of mostly kahikatea, mataī and tōtara. The inner coastal sand dunes were covered in hardier scrub bush, including akeake, taupata, tūmatakuru, ngaio, carmichaelia, and coprosma. Christchurch was rich in birdlife, but European colonisers burned forests to create pasture and introduced predators. This led to local extinction of many species of native birds. Evidence of human activity in the area begins in approximately 1250 AD, with evidence of prolonged occupation beginning no later than 1350 AD. These first occupants lived in coastal caves around modern-day Sumner, and hunted local species of moa. The early settlers and their descendants became known as the historic Waitaha Māori iwi. Around c. …

Christchurch is halfway along the east coast of the South Island, facing the South Pacific Ocean. With the exception of the Port Hills on Banks Peninsula to its south, the city sits on flat land, on average about 20 m (66 ft) above sea level. The present land mass of New Zealand split from the super continent of Gondwana about 85 million years ago. Prior to that time, mudstone and hardened sandstones commonly known as greywacke was deposited and deformed by tectonic movement. Following the split from Gondwana, during the period between 80 and 23 million years ago, the land became eroded and subsided below sea level. Marine and terrestrial sediments were deposited, leaving the greywacke as the oldest and deepest layers (basement rock). About 11–6 million years ago, volcanic eruptions created the Banks Peninsula volcanic complex. …