Daily Photo – Dawn on Lower Stuart Street
I took this photo of Lower Stuart Street early one morning, and just like much of Dunedin, it’s early surveyor Charles Kettle we can thank for it. In 1846 when Kettle arrived in Otago with the rather daunting task of turning what was largely wilderness into a new town. Working with his assistants, he surveyed the head of the harbour and began laying out the streets, sections and reserves that would become Dunedin. Kettle had studied Edinburgh before leaving Britain, and deliberately borrowed elements of its layout, including the broad streets, squares and central Octagon. The terrain, however, had other ideas. Hills, gullies, swamps and Bell Hill all got in the way, but Kettle pressed on. By the time the first settlers arrived in 1848, the basic town plan was largely complete.
The small wrinkle in the story starts with what we now know as Stuart Street. When Charles Kettle laid out Dunedin in his original survey, the street we call Stuart Street was actually called Albert Street. At some point the name was changed to Stuart Street, adding another Scottish connection to a town already filled with reminders of Edinburgh as Princes Street, George Street and Hanover Street had all been borrowed from the Scottish capital. Stuart Street followed the same pattern.
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