Victoria Road - Victoria Road

Smithfield Place and Beyond

Before John Barber opened his Smithfield livestock market in 1855 (on what is today part of The Parade car park) the area now occupied by Victoria Road was the site of a lane linking New Street to King Street. This thoroughfare became known as Smithfield Place in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century and was considered infamous at the time, for its slum tenements and the anti-social activities that took place within them. In 1887, Wellington's Improvement Commissioners, who were elected to carry out public health reforms in the town between 1854 and 1894, seized upon the occasion of Queen Victoria's 50th Jubilee celebrations as an opportunity to sweep Smithfield Place away forever, opening Victoria Street in its place. However, it too disappeared, beneath the new ring road in the early 1970s, when the original street was realigned and re-christened Victoria Road.

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