The Mystery of the Severed Hand at the Clarendon Hotel

What do you think was Christchurch’s newest and grandest hotel in the early 1900s? It was right here, the Clarendon Hotel, on the corner of Oxford Terrace and Worcester Street. It replaced a two-story wooden hotel from 1851 that was torn down in 1903.

The very first building here was a residence for Mr. William Guise Brittan, built in the early days of the settlement. Charlotte Godley described it as "exactly like a small villa, just out of London." The old Land Office, the first building in the city, was directly across from it, and for a long time, these two buildings stood alone.

Irishman Rowland Robert Teape Davis bought the house and land in 1859 and added a hotel. It was first called Davis Hotel, then Lyttelton in 1860. Davis had arrived in New Zealand on the ‘Aurora’ in January 1840, having been a smith. He'd run the Aurora Tavern and Britannia Saloon in Lambton Quay for ten years before moving to Lyttelton in 1851 to set up the Canterbury Hotel. He represented Lyttelton in the Provincial Council and supported Moorhouse’s tunnel and railway schemes. In 1860, the family moved to Christchurch, staying here until 1864 when they moved to ‘Kealkill’ on the Heathcote River.

After Davis, C. H. Smith, an ex-Royal Navy mess steward, managed it for a year, followed by Benjamin Napthali Jones. Jones was an American Jew, actor, and comedian who adopted the name Jones. He was publican of the Railway Hotel in Lyttelton in 1862 but was declared bankrupt in Auckland by July 1870. He’d arrived in the early 1850s and had staged productions at the old Town Hall and Theatre Royal. After being a hotelier, he returned to acting in Sydney and Melbourne, dying in 1890.

Experienced hotelier George Oram changed the hotel's name to the Clarendon in 1866, after George Villiers, the 4th Earl of Clarendon, the British foreign secretary. Oram made improvements to the buildings and service. During the Royal visit of 1869, Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, stayed here in May. It’s said Oram, in powdered wig and satin breeches, waited on him personally. The Prince was so impressed he gave Oram the title “Hotel Keeper by Appointment to His Royal Highness Prince Alfred the Duke of Edinburgh.”

The Clarendon hosted other royalty over the years, like King George VI in 1948 and Queen Elizabeth in 1954, and also the Beatles in 1964, who waved from the Worcester Street balcony. But it wasn’t always grand; it was once considered "miserably old and shabby." Proposals to rebuild were made as early as June 1883, and the licensee, Mr Tregonwell Augustus White-Parsons, had his annual license application denied because the building was so old.