Feb 9, 2008

Lyttelton's Trilby Fish & Oyster Saloon



Charles Luney opened his second restaurant, the Trilby Fish & Oyster Saloon, on the lower East side of Canterbury Street in 1904.

It boasted a separate ladies' dining room, thereby preserving the refined sensibilities of the town's matrons from the rough and ready manners of the seamen and wharfies who frequented the popular Fish & Chip eatery.

But perhaps Luney's most significant offering to posterity was his eldest son; Charles Seymour Luney (1905-2006). Into his late nineties the city's most renowned builder continued to preside over the enterprise, which constructed many of the more significant buildings of his century.

Barely recognisable in its current incarnation, the early 1870s building is now an apartment duplex.