Lawrence is 92 km west of Dunedin by road on the Tuapeka River, a tributary of the Clutha/Mata-Au. Lawrence developed in the 1860s gold rushes. A settlement of Chinese miners just outside the town had 300 residents in 1870. Beer from Lawrence’s Black Horse brewery, first set up in 1866, was ‘famed from Canterbury to Bluff’. The brewery closed in 1923. Several hectares of daffodils planted by the brewery attracted excursion trains and buses from Dunedin in spring.
Meaning of place name
Named in 1857 by Sir John L.C. Richardson after Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, the defender of Lucknow.
