Street names tell stories

You can tell a lot about where you live by looking at the names of the streets. If you look a little closer, a street name can tell you about the character, people, land, and history of a place. Street names tell stories.

Berryfields in Richmond shares a snippet of its long history by its street names. For 60 years, the 360 acres where 4,000 houses now sit, was a dairy and fruit farm owned and operated by the Field family.

Herringbone St is a nod to the previously standing, and long-time operational, Herringbone cow shed.

Herringbones are shaped much like a fish skeleton, and cows line up on either side, where the bones would branch out from the spine. The farmer stands in a sunken pit in the middle to milk the cows.

“I was in Alioke Cafe recently, and I thought ‘this is pretty much exactly where the hay shed was’,” says previous farm owner, Alan Field.

Alan’s father purchased 100 acres in 1942 and transformed the land into an operational dairy farm that supplied the Nelson township with milk.

“A lot of people thought that buying the land wasn’t a good idea, half of it was swampy and boggy, while the other half was dry land with no water. It worked out, and later on in life he press-ganged us three boys to help on the farm,” Alan laughs.

Further on, when Alan’s father retired, the three sons took over the farm.

“My role was dairy, my brother Peter was the engineer, and Philip was the administrator. This worked well for us, with each of us having separate responsibilities,” Alan says.

Together they purchased the neighbouring property, bringing their acreage up to 360. They reduced the number of cows they were milking and diversified into apples, kiwifruit, and boysenberries.

“We had almost 80 acres of boysenberries there,” adds Alan.

These berries were where the majority of the first houses were built, extending from Berryfield Drive to McShane Rd.

Alongside all of this, Alan was also busy working in the policy space as the chairman for Nelson Milk and Subdividing the land for housing was something the Field family had been negotiating with the council for more than 16 years before it became a reality. The Field family sold to developers who converted the land into the now-established Berryfields.

Herringbone St is not the only street that has hidden history relating to the previous dairy and fruit farm.

“Dartnell Lane. Dartnell is my mother’s middle name. Then there’s Ayrshire St and Holstein Lane, which are both varieties of Friesian cows that my father bred on the farm,” Alan says.

“The stud was named Midlane Stud, that’s where Midlane Cres gets its name, and Summerfield Boulevard - Summer is my middle name and Field is our last, so that’s a family one.

“When one Berryfields’ house owner was asked what she thought Herringbone St referred to, her response was: ‘It’s a flooring pattern’.”

A street named after flooring - there’s a thought.