Penrith Street is located between Clawton Street and the Waimea stream in Westown, an area subdivided by Mr C.W.H. Frank in the late 1950s. As is common, it was the developer who recommended the street names to the New Plymouth City Council.
Mr Frank and his wife Winifred had three children, two daughters and a son. The name Penrith was chosen as it is said their son Kenneth had a connection with Penrith in Australia. What exactly this link was, we have been unable to discover. It may simply be that their son had moved to Australia and lived in Penrith.
Penrith lies at the foot of the Blue Mountains, 50 kilometres west of Sydney. It in turn is named after the market town of Penrith in Cumbria, England. The name is Cumbric, the language spoken in this area until about the 11thcentury. It most likely means "red hill", although an alternative opinion is that it comes from the word for "chief ford".
Penrith in New South Wales was first settled by Europeans in 1818. By the 1950s the growth of population in western Sydney necessitated the creation of the first satellite city in Australia. In one of Australia's largest town planning achievements, Penrith City was established; it comprised the towns of Penrith and St. Marys as well as a number of smaller settlements.
However, it is undoubtedly best known in New Zealand as the home of the National Rugby League team, the Penrith Panthers.
This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.
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