Cathedral Square Cathedral Square is not in fact a square, but a cross. The land there had not been used much by M?ori although the settlement Puari was on the higher land nearby. The planned square in the centre of the town was supposed to be called Ridley Square after one of the Protestant martyrs , Bishop Nicholas Ridley, but in Edward Jollie's 1850 plan of central Christchurch it is clearly marked Cathedral Square. In 1851 the Canterbury Association kept aside an area of the Square for the planned Christ Church Cathedral and also for a school. This land came under the control of the Church Property Trustees in 1855, and in 1857 the site planned for a grammar school (Christ's College) was exchanged for its present site in the Botanic Gardens. There was not much development in the Square during the 1850s, but the Provincial Government paid out-of-work immigrants to level the land and plant blue gums. The gums can be seen in some of the photographs of Dr Alfred Barker , one of the first inhabitants of the Square. In 1862 the block on the eastern side of the Square was kept for the cathedral, and the rest of the land was taken over by the Provincial Government. A shingle road across the middle linked the two sections of Colombo Street. The building of the cathedral began with the laying of the foundation stone in 1864, and the amount of activity in the Square grew from then on.