Place Name
The Reverend Richard Parnell of St Stephen’s Anglican Church who saw a rapid increase in his parish as industry in the area boomed and working mens’ houses were closed in other parts of the city. Christian Work, a magazine about the Anglican Church, featured him in an article of 1864, what, it asked, would have become of the area with a “less energetic pastor than Mr Parnell?” It replied: “Simply that the whole district would fall into a state of utter demoralisation, such in fact as many of the eastern parishes were in some fifty years since, when their population augmented suddenly without such men to meet the attendant evils as fortunately we possess in the present day. It would be a revolting task indeed to describe some of the eastern parishes at the time we allude to; better far let their memory die away, for they were a disgrace to us as a Christian nation.” The road was named after him in 1873.
