Dallington, New Zealand

Story

Dallington is a suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand, on the north-east side of the city.It is bounded mainly by the Avon river, stretching in a circular area from the intersection of Gayhurst Road, Dallington Terrace and Locksley Avenue along to New Brighton Road, North Parade and Banks Avenue where it meets the intersection at the other end of Dallington Terrace and River Road. Its neighbouring suburbs are Burwood, Shirley, Richmond, and Avonside.It is home to two primary schools, Banks Avenue School and St. Paul's School, (a Roman Catholic school), with three high schools - Shirley Boys' High, Marian College and Avonside Girls' High close by, in neighbouring suburbs.On September 4, 2010, it was severely hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, causing immense damage. Consequently, the St Paul's parish church and school which had suffered greatly from the effects of the quake, were forced to relocate their church services to the Marian College chapel and the students to the Catholic Cathedral College site, for the following couple of years estimated that it would take to rebuild. The college accommodated the entire primary school community of St Paul's School for a short time. But the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake (6.3 magnitude) caused far worse devastation to the city than the September 2010 earthquake. Parts of Catholic Cathedral College were under the unstable 400-ton dome of the Catholic Cathedral. Because the dome was in imminent danger of collapse, the college left the site and St Paul's School was moved to a site which the Minister of Education made available in Champion St.