Also known as: The Bedford at CPIT, The Bedford MK II, The Bedford Marquee, The Bedford Bigtop
Location: 160 Lichfield Street (corner of Bedford Row), Christchurch Central
Current status: Demolished (original site); subsequent marquee incarnations closed by c.2020
Active: c. 2002–2020 (multiple sites and formats)
Capacity: c. 1,000
History
The Bedford was Christchurch’s most significant large-scale live music venue of the 2000s — a converted warehouse occupying the block between Lichfield Street and the laneway known as Bedford Row, in the heart of the central city. Built from an existing warehouse shell, the venue provided concert-sized sound and lighting rigs in a city that had historically struggled to offer mid-capacity touring acts a suitable home. With room for around 1,000 people, it sat between the small bar stages that dominated the downtown scene and the stadium-scale venues that few local or regional touring acts could justify filling.
The Bedford was operated by Wendy Alfeld (also referred to in some sources as Wendy Newland), who positioned it as the natural landing point for larger New Zealand acts and smaller international touring artists passing through Christchurch. The venue supplied a professional production infrastructure — stage, sound and lights — that allowed promoters to present shows to an audience that other Christchurch rooms simply could not accommodate. In the late 2000s, acts including Shihad, Six60, Katchafire, Shapeshifter, The Black Seeds, Villainy, I Am Giant, and Devilskin all passed through its doors, with many nights selling out.
The venue also hosted a variety of international touring acts at the more modest end of the global circuit, offering Christchurch audiences access to artists that would otherwise have bypassed the South Island entirely. UK acts such as the Buzzcocks and Mancunian indie veterans James appeared on the Bedford stage, alongside local hip-hop, rock, reggae and electronic acts. The programming was broad by necessity — Alfeld needed to fill the room consistently, and The Bedford became known as an anything-goes venue as long as the scale justified it. De La Soul, Roots Manuva, David Dallas, Delta Heavy, and Heavy Metal Ninjas were among the acts documented playing there across its decade of operation.
The February 2011 Christchurch earthquake destroyed the original Lichfield Street building along with much of the surrounding central city entertainment precinct. The Bedford was demolished in the aftermath, along with neighbouring venues Al’s Bar, Goodbye Blue Monday, and The Media Club. The loss of so many mid-sized and small venues in a single event devastated the city’s live music infrastructure, leaving promoters and artists with nowhere to play at any meaningful scale.
Alfeld’s response was one of the defining stories of the post-earthquake Christchurch music scene. Rather than closing the operation, she reinvented The Bedford as a series of temporary marquee venues — a travelling approach she described as a “travelling sideshow.” The first post-quake incarnation, The Bedford MK II, was established under a large marquee at 86 Moorhouse Avenue and began hosting events from March 2011. The tent format created an outdoor-party atmosphere unlike anything the city had seen before, and sell-out nights continued under challenging conditions. However, the marquee’s thin walls allowed bass frequencies to travel long distances into the surrounding residential areas. Noise complaints from neighbours eventually led to the resource consent being revoked, ending the Moorhouse Ave stint.
Further iterations followed: The Bedford Marquee operated from sites on Lichfield and Hereford Streets, and The Bedford ran shows from the CPIT campus at 126 Madras Street — sometimes listed as “The Bedford at CPIT” — using the polytechnic’s facilities as a temporary anchor. The final, most stable marquee incarnation was The Bedford Bigtop at the corner of Madras and Gloucester Streets, which continued hosting major touring shows well into the 2010s. Katchafire played the Bigtop in September 2018; Shihad’s 30th anniversary tour of their album The General Electric moved its Christchurch date there in October 2018 due to demand. Devilskin appeared at the Bigtop as late as October 2020.
The resilience of The Bedford brand through these years earned national recognition. In 2012, the Music Managers Forum (MMF) included a Best Venue category for the first time in their annual Music Managers Awards, and The Bedford — despite having no permanent home — was voted a finalist alongside The Leigh Sawmill, San Francisco Bath House (Wellington), The Yot Club (Raglan), and Zeal (West Auckland). The nomination acknowledged Alfeld’s extraordinary effort in maintaining a credible large-capacity venue for Christchurch in the face of earthquake destruction, resource consent battles, and repeated relocations.
The venue was not without controversy. In September 2015, The Bedford at CPIT hosted a performance by US hip-hop act Pretty Ricky that drew widespread condemnation after band members engaged in sexually explicit behaviour on stage with a female audience member. Multiple concert-goers walked out, and the incident attracted national media coverage. Alfeld issued a public apology and confirmed the group would not be invited back. The episode illustrated the risks inherent in bringing unfamiliar international touring acts to a venue operating outside normal fixed-premise regulatory oversight.
At its peak, The Bedford filled a gap in Christchurch’s music infrastructure that no other venue could match — a place where 1,000-capacity touring shows were possible in a city that otherwise offered only small bars and distant arenas. Its post-earthquake reinventions, while technically separate venues, kept the spirit of the original alive through a decade of disruption and helped sustain a live music culture in Christchurch through the most difficult period in the city’s modern history.
The Bedford’s aim has always been to provide larger scale NZ and smaller international touring acts with a decent place to play in Christchurch, providing concert-sized sound and lighting rigs and space for around 1,000 people. Under trying circumstances since September 2010, owner Wendy Newland has done an incredible job of getting these types of acts back into Christchurch.
NZ Musician, Live in Christchurch