Khandallah
Wellington’s wealthiest northern suburb offers the best of suburban living; yet it’s only a 10-minute drive to the city’s heart, with excellent bus and train services. Properties in Khandallah are highly sought-after, not least because of the spectacular views of the city, harbour and Orongorongo mountain range. It’s a leafy suburb, with stately old houses, official embassy residences and many new properties.
Khandallah has good facilities: primary schools, pre-school centres, tennis and squash club, Nairnville Sports Ground and Recreation Centre, bowling club, scout club, churches – and ‘the village’ provides excellent shopping, including one of Wellington’s excellent independent butchers. Khandallah’s quaint Edwardian town hall is used for community events.
Khandallah Park is one of New Zealand's oldest; it was designated as a domain in 1909 and has more than 60 hectares of native bush with 9km of walking tracks. The local swimming pool was opened in 1925.
The suburb’s name comes from a place in Rajasthan (Khandela, meaning ‘resting place of god’) which was the name of a house built by Capt James Andrew in 1884, after he retired from the Indian Army; many of the street and place have been given Indian names, some were renamed relatively recently (Simla Crescent, for example, was The Crescent until 1925).
The telephone exchange in Khandallah Road was completed in 1921, the first important public building built after the First World War; the building is considered a national treasure as it’s the oldest automatic telephone exchange in New Zealand to survive unaltered (it was designed by John Campbell, the Government Architect).
Box Hill was originally ‘Sentry Box Hill’, one of the stockades built for troops pursuing Te Rauparaha (the next one was at Johnsonville); Sir George Grey, Governor of New Zealand, an enthusiast of Roman roading systems, ordered soldiers to widen and improve the road between Wellington and Porirua so troops could move more quickly.
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View from Khandallah to city |