Lincoln, New Zealand

In 1862 James Edward FitzGerald of ‘The Springs’ subdivided some of his freehold land for the new township of Lincoln, named after the Earl of Lincoln, a foundation member of the Canterbury Association and from 1851 a member of the management committee. The site of Lincoln on the L1 River would allow for a flour mill to be built to service the growing farming district. Lincoln was laid out in a grid layout and FitzGerald named the four belts North, East, South and West and the cross streets after his own children Robert, Maurice and William. The main streets James, Edward and Gerald were names after himself.
The new township steadily grew and by 1873 Lincoln had a post office, butcher, brewers, a baker and confectioner, a storekeeper who had a hotel, a wheelwright and a carpenter, and a blacksmith. The peaceful quality of Lincoln changed with the arrival of the railway line in 1875 and the opening of the Little River line in 1886.[3]

On 26 April 1875, a branch line railway was opened to Lincoln from a junction with the Main South Line in Hornby. This line became the Southbridge Branch. Within a few years, Lincoln became a junction itself, with the Little River Branch diverging from the Southbridge Branch in Lincoln. This branch opened to Birdling's Flat on 16 May 1882 and Little River itself on 11 March 1886. On 30 June 1962, Lincoln became a railway terminus when the Little River Branch and the Lincoln-Southbridge section of the Southbridge Branch were both closed. The railway did not last much longer in Lincoln, closing on 1 December 1967. Today, the Little River Rail Trail is being established along the railway's old route. The Prebbleton to Lincoln leg of the route was opened on 30 November 2006. The trail is used extensively for recreation.

Lincoln photographed by Whites Aviation, May 1957

Lincoln has three schools, two primary and one secondary.

• Lincoln Primary School is a state full primary (Year 1–8) school. It was established in 1866 and has a roll of 616 students as of March 2020.[4]
• Lincoln High School is a state secondary (Year 9–13) school. It was established in 1959 and has a roll of 1400 students as of March 2020.[4]
• Ararira Springs Primary School is a state full primary (Year 1–8) school. It opened in 2019 and has a roll of 168 students as of March 2020.[4]

Ararira Springs Primary School is the second primary school for the town. It was tentatively named Lincoln South School and open in February 2019.[5]

Lincoln is the site of Lincoln University. As well as the university, there are a number of other research facilities in Lincoln, including AgResearch, Institute for Plant and Food Research, FAR (Foundation for Arable Research), and Landcare Research. The High Performance Cricket training centre is also based at Lincoln University. Over 400 people are employed at these organisations making Lincoln a busy little country village.

Lincoln also has a maternity hospital, kindergarten and golf course.

Lincoln also hosts the first New Zealand supermarket to have wind turbines generating some of its power: Lincoln New World. The supermarket was built with a number of sustainable initiatives in keeping with the Enviro town it is servicing.[6]

• Christchurch-Little River Railtrail
• High Performance Centre - Lincoln University