Akaroa Historical Overview - Christchurch City Council

Akaroa was made a port of entry in 1842, as part of an effort to bring the smuggling of
alcohol into the town under control. But the officials appointed to administer the
customs did not operate from their own premises until the following decade (see
below). 38
The lasting influences of early Akaroa
Once the 1850s brought an influx of British settlers to all parts of Canterbury, Akaroa
ceased to be a French village. A few of the buildings erected by the French survived for
some decades, and the children of the original settlers continued to speak French as well
as English, but the children of the next generation, many of whom had only one French
parent, lost the language. By the 1860s it was no longer meaningful to describe Akaroa as
“a small piece of provincial France”. 39
Only two buildings have survived from the 1840s, and both have been so significantly
modified that neither is any longer representative of the character of the French village
of that decade. The Bouriaud House can just be recognised because of its bulk and
general form, but is no longer the distinctively French building it appeared when it was
first erected. 40 The Langlois-Eteveneaux House looks distinctively French, but it owes
most of its features to a transformation effected in the late 19 th century, the significance
of which is discussed in the next section of this report.
Three features of the French village of the 1840s had an enduring impact on the
character of Akaroa. The first was the division of the town into two “ends”. The division
persists to this day, for purely topographical reasons though it has been many decades
since people of 'French' or 'English' origins lived separately at each end. The steep rise of
the hills from the shore between the two ends of the town has kept the two “ends” of
the town from merging.
The second was that Akaroa began its life as what it remained – a town of small scale.
The French settlers came from poor backgrounds, and though some were ambitious and
prospered (one or two at least accumulating enough money to send their children back
to France for their schooling), many were satisfied to achieve a high level of selfsufficiency
supplemented by small-scale trade. That early Akaroa was a community of
people of relatively slender means accounts to some extent for the scale of the town
today. 41
The third is that the early village was essentially a maritime settlement. Though very few
people now come to Akaroa or leave by sea and the commercial fishing industry is almost
non-existent, Akaroa still looks to the sea for recreational activity and the sea is still a key
element in its setting. In addition to its maritime setting, the town still has a background
of high hills, though these are no longer forested. The development of the lower hill
slopes after the end of World War II did not significantly diminish the impression Akaroa
still gives (as it gave 19 th visitors) of being a small settlement, sitting snug between hills
and harbour.
38 Mould, More Tales, pp. 64-65
39 Brooking and Rabel in Greif, ed. Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand, (Dunmore Press,
Palmerston North, 1995), p. 30
40 A thorough examination of this house by a ‘building archaeologist’ might identify surviving features
that give it greater significance than its altered form and detail suggest it has.
41 Fearnley, Unpublished manuscript, ch. 9
AKAROA HERITAGE OVERVIEW : SECTION 4 THE FRENCH VILLAGE 1840 TO 1850 PAGE 21