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Nelson Historical Society Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1966

Trafalgar Square:

Trafalgar Square:

Formed by the roads round Church Hill and joining the two parts of Trafalgar Street. Wakefield probably mentions it in a diary entry for January 19th, 1842:

"Read the burial service over Wm. Straith who was buried in a reserve beyond the principal square or parallelogram."

The square encloses Church Hill, felt from the beginning of the settlement to be the most suitable and fitting centre for the new town and chosen by Bishop Selwyn as the outstanding site for the Cathedral of Nelson. Many others also recognised the desirability of the site and the civic authorities can be commended for their polite but firm policy of removing surveyors' offices, forts, powder magazines, newspaper offices, gaols, hospitals and sundry other buildings from the Hill. Their aim, to create it a place of beauty, with its Cathedral surrounded by trees and lawns, its fine approach in the Cawthron Steps, and the inclusion of a few worthy memorials of civic value is marred only by the choice of their latest erection.

In the early drawings it was a bare hill but Domett and Poynter, among others, showed their civic spirit by planting trees there. We can share in their indignation over the following:

"Reward Offered.

Provincial Secretary's Office, August 8, 1862. £5 Reward—Two young trees (cypress and pepper-mint gum) having been stolen from the Church Hill……

Alfred Greenfield, Chief Clerk."