What is the connection between Christ Church, Oxford, and Christchurch, New Zealand?

Answer: the leader of the group of colonists who founded the latter in 1850 was a graduate of the former — and wanted to replicate some its attributes, notably the idea of grouping together a cathedral, a college and a school. Now, in the wake of earthquakes in Christchurch, a former research student at Christ Church, Prof Raoul Franklin, a New Zealander, tells me that the link between the two has received a much needed fillip.

Christchurch, part of the South Island province of Canterbury, was founded by the Anglo-Irish statesman John Robert Godley (1814-1861). He was asked by that colourful character Edward Gibbon Wakefield, owner of the New Zealand Company, to raise funds and lead the new colony. He had gone up to Oxford from Harrow in 1832 but it was not until 1848 that he established a colonising society, called the Canterbury Association, to arrange passages for the first 3,500 settlers, known as Canterbury Pilgrims.

He himself arrived in New Zealand in April 1850 together with his wife Charlotte and their two-year-old son Arthur — who later became the first Baron Kilbracken of Killegar. Half the management committee of the Canterbury Association were Christ Church graduates — and 48 of the original 50 members of the association were educated at Oxford or Cambridge.

The first four ships bringing settlers — the Randolph, the Cressy, the Sir George Seymour and the Charlotte Jane — left London’s East India Dock in September 1850, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and arrived in December. The Pilgrims consisted of two distinct groups: Colonists and Emigrants. Colonists, who travelled in relatively comfortable cabins, were people who could afford to buy land; Emigrants, cramped into steerage, were those who would initially work the land. Capital for establishing the infrastructure of the colony was raised from the difference between the price that the Canterbury Association paid to the New Zealand Company for the land, and that at which it sold it to the colonists.

Godley wanted to bring the best of English civilisation to Christchurch — and some say it is still the most English of cities outside England. With this in mind he brought more than just the name of his old college to New Zealand. The cathedral, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott who also worked at Christ Church, Oxford, as well as designing the Martyrs’ Memorial here; the public school Christ’s College and Canterbury College (now Canterbury University) were built to dominate the main square of Christchurch — which itself was built as the focal point of the colony life.

Among the the first colonists to disembark in Canterbury was James Edward FitzGerald. He went on to produce a set of watercolours, along with a children’s book called Seadrift, which he gave to Godley and his son Arthur. Copies of these later formed a part of Godley’s Gifts, a beautifully reproduced record of early New Zealand life, a set of which Lord Kilbracken presented to Christ Church in 2009.

Prof Franklin told me: “When a cathedral was built in Christchurch it consciously embodied a rose window closely designed on that of Christ Church, Oxford. Local stone was used for that building and many of the original university buildings that have suffered so badly. They were stone and masonry buildings, not designed to withstand earthquake tremors.”

When the bronze statue of Mr Godley, which stood in Cathedral Square, Christchurch, toppled down in the February quake, two time-capsules were found beneath it. These are now being examined by experts at the Canterbury Museum.

Prof Franklin now holds out the hope that some good will come from what is still sometimes called an Act of God. He said: “There has been a significant response from Christ Church, Oxford, launching an appeal and seeking advice on how best to perpetuate a link that was in danger of atrophying.

“One such thought is to establish a link that would bring Canterbury graduates to do post-graduate work in Oxford.”

As for the colourful Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), who dreamed up the idea for the colony in the first place: he was in Newgate jail awaiting trial for abducting a 15-year-old heiress, Ellen Turner, from school and then marrying her at Gretna Green, when he turned his mind to revolutionary ideas about colonisation. In prison he produced his influential study of the subject that was to transform his career.

Funny old thing is time.