ABOUT

McBride’s History

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McBride's Monumental Masons was started by Samuel McBride, who had been building and supplying monuments, plaques and headstones to the South Canterbury community since about 1871. He was a fine craftsman and his work was renowned throughout the district. Among many other notable works, he constructed the Troopers Memorial, a well-known and beautifully crafted Timaru monument commemorating the Boer War. It stands at the intersection of Memorial Ave, King St and Catherine St in Timaru. Many of the more striking headstones in Timaru Cemetery were also crafted by Samuel McBride.

In 1974, Mr Arnold Earl owned McBride Monumental Masons, who then were located in the premises now occupied by Pope Print on Sophia Street.  Arnold kept up McBride’s tradition of highly skilled design and implementation, continuing to build McBride’s reputation for excellent quality, workmanship and attention to detail.  When Mr Earl retired, McBride’s Monumental Masonry business was bought by the O’Reilly’s and although McBride’s became part of Hall and Moore Funerals, it kept its illustrious name, as it does to this day. 

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Paul and Marie Lockyer bought Hall and Moore’s in 2001, changing the name of the funeral side of the business to Aoraki.  The Monumental Masonry, true to its nearly 150 years of servicing the South Canterbury district with lasting and beautiful monuments, deservedly kept its’ original name, McBride’s Monumental Masons.