Coutanche Family

In loving memory of Elie, dearly beloved husband of Lucy Coutanche, who died 12th April 1914 aged 58 years.

"Until the days breaks and the shadows fall away."

Also Lucy, dearly loved wife of the above, died 20th September 1948, aged 84 years.

"He giveth his beloved sleep."

Also their loved daughter Harriet Ann, loved wife of E G Bright, died 15th August 1963, aged 72. Loved mother of eight children.

Historical information

Row B, Plot 7: Elie and Lucy Coutanche

One of the early settlers who gardened on the Avondale Flat was Elie Coutanche. He was from Jersey in the Channel Islands and had visited Auckland as a sail-maker on the Langstone in 1882. Liking what he saw, he worked the return trip to London and got his discharge on 20 March 1883. The round trip took 10 months under sail as the Langstone had no engines.

He purchased the two 4-acres blocks on the corners of Rosebank Road and what is now Mead Street. By March 1890, when he married Lucy Loines at St Paul's in Central Auckland, he was established as a market gardener in Avondale. He sold produce by hawking from a horse and cart at least as far as Symonds Street. He erected glasshouses that stood for over a hundred years with many rebuilds and repairs. In these he grew grapes, some of which were supplied to Government House in Princes Street (now part of the university campus.)

In his time many people kept cows on Avondale flat, and they were often left to graze on the "long acre" or roadside. They put pressure on the fences around Elie's gardens and he responded by planting wild onion (Allium triquitrum) under the fence line. Cows eating it produced tainted milk and so gave their owners incentive to control them -- on that stretch of Rosebank Road at least. There was still a strip of wild onion alongside the footpath 60 years later.

Elie died at Auckland Hospital in 1914 as a result of injuries he received when he was kicked by a horse. He didn't get to sit under the pear tree that he planted for his old age, though this was still bearing fruit in the late 1940s. The house he had built on Rosebank Road burnt down in 1926. Elie was survived by his wife and two children and the two properties remained in the descendants' families until the late 1950s, with two further generations gardening there.

"Tales of the Avondale Flat - Elie Coutanche's Story (1856-1914)", by Bob Hume, published in Avondale Historical Journal, Vol 2 Issue 11, 2003