As a child I associated the name Ernest Adams with cakes - or maybe it was sponges as we didn't buy cakes. Anyway I knew the name, but that was all. When I started to write about the head of the harbour, I read Colin Amodeo's history of Chomondeley Children's Home - A Beautiful Haven - and was touched to learn of Ernest Adam's close association with the home and his generosity; a businessman with a strong social conscience. From my draft (drawing on Colin Amodeo's work)...
In 1939 Ernest Adams became President of Cholmondeley’s Board of Trustees, a position he held for the next 15 years, after which he remained on the Board and as a sub-committee member. He became Patron of Cholmondeley in 1968. Son of a master baker in England, Ernest Adams came to Christchurch via Australia. He established the Adams Bruce partnership, which then morphed into Ernest Adams Ltd – a highly successful South Island-based bakery. Ernest Adam’s experience of his father’s bankruptcy and the death of his first wife and second child in childbirth, meant that he was particularly attuned to the problems of poverty and the stresses of family life. He would organize his Christchurch staff into working parties to do repairs and maintenance at Cholmondeley and see to the upkeep of the grounds. A trust fund set up by Ernest Adams in 1960 provided over $100,000 for the building of a new wing in 1993.
