The name
Three Lamps is the Ponsonby quarter around the intersection of Ponsonby Road, Jervois Road, St Marys Road, and College Hill — a few minutes on foot from our building.
The name comes from a nineteenth-century cast-iron lamppost with three lanterns on one column. It stood at the busy crossroads and became a local landmark and meeting place. As traffic grew, the original lamp was removed in the 1930s. In 2012 a replica was installed on the footpath nearby, echoing the post that named the district.
The neighbourhood
Before it was widely known as Ponsonby, the area was called Dedwood — after an early farm in what is now Herne Bay. Over the twentieth century, Three Lamps grew into a mixed, working part of the city: shops and pubs, boarding houses and family homes, trams and foot traffic.
Māori and Pacific communities have long been part of life here. From the later twentieth century the wider district also became known for activism, music, and creative culture — a reputation for independence that still fits Ponsonby today.
The building
Three Lamps Counselling & Psychotherapy Centre is upstairs at 2 Jervois Road — the white corner building with the old Le Quesne’s Pharmacy facade on the street. Heritage records often list the address as 6 Jervois Road; the street was renumbered, but it is the same corner site.
Le Quesne’s Pharmacy was founded here at the Three Lamps in 1896 by Alfred W. G. Le Quesne, one of Auckland’s early registered chemists. He had previously established Manning’s Pharmacy in Hamilton. His son Ernest (E. W. B. Le Quesne), also a pharmacist, later carried the business on; the family name stayed on the shopfront through much of the twentieth century as a neighbourhood institution.
For decades the ground floor was the chemist; professional rooms sat above — the same arrangement today. You enter from Jervois Road and come up the stairs to the clinic. The shop at street level is separate from the practice. We are grateful to the Le Quesne family and everyone who kept the pharmacy running here for generations; their work anchored this corner long before the rooms became a counselling centre.
The practice
From Jennifer Pamplin — a short history of how the centre developed is on its way. Jennifer founded Three Lamps and has managed the rooms as a group practice for more than thirty years; her account will replace this note when ready.