Ok, I'm sitting in the Macmillan Brown library just now, Jenny Owens, the librarian here, has found a few references to the hall. I have a printout of a clip from the society pages of the Evening Post in 1938 describing a cocktail party held at Kilmead by Mrs. John Montgomery. I also have two paragraphs in a couple of history books as follow:
Dr Edward's family, the Montgomerys, lived in a large distinguished looking house known as 'Kilmead' at 256 Riccarton Road. This house is now known as Antonio Hall and is on the outside edge of the Riccarton Borough. The house was built by Mr Kinkaid before 1930. It was known originally as Baron's Court.
Kilmead was the name of a protestant village in Northern Ireland where Dr Edwards' father's family came from. Her family sold the house to the Catholic Church in 1947. The Church in turn sold it on to an Italian woman whose last name was probably Antonio.
The family were keen on horse riding and stabled horses on the property. Dr Edwards could remember when Ilam Road had grass verges and when she could ride down Riccarton Road to Hagley Park.
Riccarton, The Founding Borough. Ian McBride, Ed. Malcolm Hopwood. 1994. Riccarton/Wigram Community Board .p. 117.
As a result of the combined Council of Australian and New Zealand Bishops held in Sydney in 1936, a national Minor (i.e. prepatory) Seminary was mooted for New Zealand, to foster vocations to the diocesan priesthood. World War II caused the project to be deferred, but it was taken up again immediately afterwards, and it fell to [Bishop Patrick Francis] Lyons to establish it. In 1947 Holy Name Seminary was opened at Riccarton, an inner suburb of Christchurch within easy range of Canterbury University. Fathers of the Society of Jesus from their Australian Province came to provide a teaching faculty that would take promising young men through secondary schooling in a more intense spiritual environment. Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny came from Ireland to provide a domestic staff, and about the same time took over staffing of Riccarton parish school. By the end of the 1960s, Holy Name Seminary was being phased out as a Minor Seminary and developed as a faculty of philosophy. In this way it complimented Holy Cross College, Mosgiel, which then restricted itself to the theology section of a priest's training. As the number of students offering themselves for the priesthood shrank again, the two faculties were combined as before at Mosgiel. The last of the Jesuits retired from the diocese, and the Holy Name complex was eventually sold to become Antonio Hall Hostel.
Held Firm by Faith. A History of the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch 1840-1987. Michael O'Meeghan SM. 1988. Catholic Diocese of Christchurch. p. 265.
So, yeah. There's some new bits of information.
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