mt roskill

Formerly an area of swamp, quarries and scrubland, the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill was developed after 1945 as a major state housing suburb. It merges into tracts of low-cost private housing in neighbouring New Windsor, Blockhouse Bay, Lynfield and Three Kings; larger homes in Waikōwhai and Hillsborough border Manukau Harbour. Under Keith Hay, a developer and conservative Presbyterian mayor from 1953 to 1974, Mt Roskill became known as the ‘Bible belt’. Recent immigrants from Asia and the Pacific have increased the area’s diversity.

Meaning of place name
The New Zealand Herald about 1853 reported that the hill had been named after John Roskill, an evangelist and local preacher who visited Auckland in 1852, who later lived there before his death by suicide off Customhouse Quay in June 1870. Another theory is that the name came from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The first two shiploads of immigrants to the area were all Scottish.

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