By Roselyn Fauth
Guests outside the Oxford Building celebrate its 100th birthday - Photo Geoff Cloake
On Wednesday 19th November evening I had the privilege of helping bring together 46 people to celebrate one hundred years of the Oxford Building. It was a special night where the past, present sat together to reminisce and celebrate a stunning piece of South Canterbury's built heritage. The celebration was organised by building owner Shaun Stockman, The Oxford restaurant owners Michael and Clarissa Doran, and myself, representing WuHoo Timaru and the Timaru Civic Trust.
The party was so popular a second event was planned for 3rd of December as a ticketed event.
Descendants had travelled from around the country. Long-time supporters of Timaru’s built heritage joined local heritage advocates, historians, architects, and families whose names have been part of this corner’s story for generations. What really enjoyed hearing on the night was how people found connections with one another. Some had never met before, but within minutes they were swapping stories, recognising names, and realising just how deeply this site has shaped the life of the town and in many ways their own family.
Thank you to Stockman Group who were a major event sponsor.
Guests outside the building celebrate its 100th birthday. Photo Geoff Cloake
A Corner with a Long Memory
Dinner was held inside The Oxford restaurant, established in 2013, where husband and wife team Michael and Clarissa Doran had created a special menu based on historic cookbooks from our district. At each setting was a printed timeline of the corner, which I had spent the past few months researching and pulling together. What was supposed to be a simple overview became quite dense, but the information was key to helping people see how everyone's stories and impact was interconnected.
The corner’s story begins in 1864, when David Clarkson, with business partner Richard Turnbull, built and opened Clarkson and Turnbull, a wooden store on the corner of George Street, and Great North Road, now known as Stafford Street, in Timaru.
Only four years later, in December 1868, a small fire in a carpenter’s workshop turned into the Great Fire of Timaru, fuelled by a hot and fierce nor’west wind. In just under three hours, the flames roared through buildings from Church Street, to near Woollcombe Street, destroying 39 wooden stores, offices, warehouses and homes. by the evening the central business district was reduced to ashes and brick chimney's. Three quarters of the town’s commercial centre had to rebuild, including the Richard and Davic's store on this corner, and the Turnbulls family home.
The council passed a new bi-law requiring the rebuild to be of stone and brick. Making way for the Edwardian and Victorian street scape that we see in Timaru's CBD today.
The store was rebuilt stronger, this time in brick and local bluestone, and the Turnbull family stayed connected in one way or another to the site for decades. Their greatest legacy here arrived in 1925, when DC Turnbull and Co commissioned the striking new Oxford Building, designed by Turnbull and Rule and built by A. Kennedy. It was planned as three storeys but completed as four, making it Timaru’s tallest commercial building at the time.
TIMARU IN 1863. CLARKSON AND TURNEULL'S ("GABITES' CORNER") IN THE CENTRE. TOPS OF BANK OF NEW ZEALAND AND CLUB HOTEL SEEN. DESTROYED BY FIRE IN 1868. Timaru Herald, Volume C, Issue 15369, 11 June 1914, Page 3 (Supplement) 
