THE EARLY CANTERBURY RUNS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18108, 25 June 1924, Page 9

THE EARLY CANTERBURY RUNS.

HISTORICAL NOTES. VI. (SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOH "THE TRESS.") (Br L. G. D. Aclaxd.) [I should be extremely oblißed to anyone who may be interested in these notes, if he will supply nie with corrections and any further information about persons or runs mentioned. —L.G.D.A.] Malvern Hills (Run 24). Between the Selwyn and Rakaiarivers lay some of the earliest stations 'in Canterbury. On the foothills south of the Selwyn, opposite Homebush, Sir Thomas and Henry John Tailored took up in the latter's name ten thousand acres in 1852. This Run was known as the Malvern Hills Station. Nearly half of it was poor scrub country, and it included the Wairiri Swamp of ft thousand acres. The eastern boundary ran along the present road from the Coalgate Bridge to Hororat-a Church. Henry Tancred, who had previously "be-en an officer in the Austrian Army, lived on the station and managed it, but he was a keen provincial politician and during his first year as head ol the executive government, 18r3-4, Hayhurst, who had been his shepherd and afterwards leased ih© Ashburton Station from his brother, managed Malvern Hills. During his second term as chief of tlie executive (1855-7). Laing, his next shepherd, was manager. J. B. Acland, afterwards of Mt. Peel, was his cadet thero in 1855. Acland was long remembered in the neighbourhood for his fondness for digging into mounds which he believed might be Maori graves. About 1858 Henry Tancred sold his share in the station to Bishop Harper, j whose "Life" by the Reverend H. T. Purchas contains a particularly clear account of the early settlement of the province.

Sir Thomas and the Bishop appointed the latter's son, Charles, as their manager, and Charles Harper was shortly afterwards succeeded by his brother, the present Cre'orge Harper, who a little later, in partnership with another brother —the Archdeacon — leased the run .and sheep from the owners for £7OO a year. The Archdoaoon was at that time vicar of a parish known as The Southern Stations, which included all stations between the Waimakariri and the Rakaia, and he made Malvern Hills his headquarters. He told me an amusing story of his returning ti> the station one afternoon to find neither man' nor dog at home, and of his having to run down a sheep to kill before he could have anything except dry brea-i to eat for supper. In 1865 the first wire fence on the hills of Canterbury was put up as a boundary between Malvern Hills and Rockwood.

Harper Bros.' lease terminated in April, 1866, the owners having sold their interest to John Hamilton Ward for the Canterbury Investment Co., which also owned Bangor. George Harper and his head shepherd, Robert Munro, drove the balance of their wethers over Brownings v Pass to the West Coast and sold them to the butchers there. Munro then took charge for Ward of the l sheep on both Bangor and Malvern Hills, living at the latter until 1871, while in August, ISG6. Harper went to England to prepare for his long career in the law. Ward sold Malvern Hills to Charles Fenwick Barker (who earned himself an unpleasant name by his practice of buying freehold on his friends' runs) for £BOOO early in the 'seventies, and •from him Charles Clark took over the run after a few years. Clark kept the station a year and then sub-divided it, selling the Homestead with twelve hundred acres to Walter Black, and the front part to J. H. R. Aitkon, who named it Glendore and built the Homestead, where Hugh Boyle lives now, and which was for many years well known as the iesidenoe of. Miss Cordy. The old homestead was on Mrs Dunlop's present property, but further up the gully behind her house.

The Terrace Station (Suns 17 and 20). Both these runs originally ran from the Bakaia to the Hororata Biver, the eastern boundary of No. 17 (the lower) running along the road from Hororata to Tipirita, still known as Boundary road. /

Bun 17, of ten thousand acres, was taken up ir. 1851 by Sanderson and Brayshaw at a rent 'of £2O a year. There is a large single gum-tree on the river-bed on W. J. Inche's present property which marks the site of their original hut. Sanderson and Brayshaw sold in the first year or so of their tenancy to John Studholme, who about that time also took up the Point Station at the foot of the hills further up the river. (He afterwards owned Coldstream and many other stations, being, I believe, before his death the largest sheepowner in New Zealand). . He moved the homestead to its present site, close to Hororata. Bun 20, of twenty thousand acres, was taken up in 1851 by Mark Pringle Stoddart. Stoddart was one of the shagroons, and several spirited pieces by him appear in the "Canterbury Bhymes." His homestead was! on the Bakaia river-bed below the terrace, nearly opposite Highbank, hence the present name of the station, which was originally called "the Bakaia Terrace." The spot is still a good place to feel what a nor'-wester can do. One of Stoddart's rhymes gives a vivid description of what it was like in his day. Stoddart sold the run in 1853 to John (afterwards Sir John) Hall who worked it with his brothers for a year or so, when for some reason they put most of their sheep on terms for several years with Marmaduke Dixon of Eyrewell, leaving enough on the Bakaia, however, to'hold the run. Sometime about the end of the fifties, Hall (who had in the mean time returned to the Bakaia Terrace) bought Studholme 's run and amalgamated it with his own. He moved into Studholme's homestead, but retained the name by which hi 3 first station was known. John Buller seems to have been Hall's first manager, and was succeeded by J. E. Fountain, who remained there for so many years. Sir John Hall is very well remembered for his ability in local, provincial, and New. Zealand politics and administration, and as a successful squatter. He bought the freehold of the whole of his run, and was erroneously supposed to be the originator of the "gridiron" system of land buying. By 1878, only 8000 of his 25,000 sheep were depastured on leasehold. He was also the pioneer of tree-planting on a large scale on the plains. He Bold some twenty-seven thousand acres of his land to a syndicate in 1907, not long before his death, but l his bohSj Wilfred and still hflve

fine freehold properties left there, tho station homestead belonging to the latter. The Hororata Station (Runs 67 and 96). This station of seventeen thousand acres running from tho Hororata to the Rakaia was taken up in two runs. Run 96, on tho Hororata Rivor, below the Terrace Station, which it joined on what is now Boundary road,' was taken up in 1853 by Justin Ayhucr and Spencer Percival. The year before Sanderson and Bravshaw had taken Run 67 on tho Rakaia. These two runs met about half-way between the two rivers, and were united by Avlmer and Percival about 1554. In 1859 John Cordv, a Suffolk man, who had recently given up tho management of Honiebush cattle station, bought the run. He had previously, in 1851, taken up a small run near the termination of the Bridle Patli (which later became part of Mt. Pleasant), where ho grazed sheep on terms aud bought and sold stock on commission. Ay liner was afterwards Warden of tho Gold Fields in Otago, and finally for many years Magistrate at Akaroa. Cordy made several thousand acres of the run freehold and kept the station until his death. In 1898 his executors sold what was left of it, with about COOO sheep, to Fredrick Savill for £13,000, some two thousand acres on the Rakaia having been sold previously to Catlieart Wason, of Corwar. Savill, having freeholded most of the remaining leaoshold, sold the station to William Cunningham for £26,000 in 1904. Savill afterwards owned many other stations, including Mt. Possession, Craigieburn, and Mt. White, is , now the owner of St. Helen's, but lives j in England. ' j Cunningham did not keep the place j long, and since liis time it has changed j hands several times, each owner selling off some of tho land. Since 1919 the actual homestead has belonged to H. M. Reeves, who uses it for breeding horses and fattening sheep, the combination of shelter, shade, and' strong, sound land making it one of the nicest small farms in Canterbury.

Haldon (Buns 19, 48, 60-1-2-3-4). | This station, which remained in the ! lands of the Bealey family for something like sixty years, was taken up in aehn runs of forty thousand acres in all by John and Samuel Bealey in lf-52. On a survey, one of the Westenras' Camla runs was found to intersect the Bealey's country, but an exchange made the whole of both stations continuous. Haldon began on the Sclwyn at the Coalgate bridgo, and ran to the Hororata Church, taking in all the country between the Selwyn and Hororata below that lino. Below Aylmer and Percival's, tho boundary crossed to the Kakaia river, which it followed down to the present Bailway bridge. The Mead settlement and the Ardlui and Newstead estates were all originally part of Haldon. In the very early days John Bealey sold his interest to his brother Samuel Bealey, who was the third Superintendent of Canterbury.. Lii™ all the Superintendents, ho was a fine tyuO ot scholarly gentlemen, but he cured much less for politics than the ethers, and succeeded better than any of them in his own affairs. He did i ot live much on the station, and after his term of Superintendent returned to England, thenceforward onlv paying occasional visits to New Zealand. From '1864 to 1869 he let the station to John Tucker. Ford. _At that time the Tun was divided into only three large paddocks. "In 1862, when Bealey began breaking up some of the land near the homestead, Dr. Knyvett, who was out here* last year as a ship's surgeon, was his ploughman. From the end of Ford's lease m 1869 until Nowell Bealey (Samuels son) took charge, Alick Mcllwraith was the manager. - ■ - The boundary gateway, where tne South road passed from Haldon to Camla, was just below the present Bankside railway station. Most coun-. try people will remember the days when boundary dogs wefe. chained at gateways to keep sheep from -passing through. The dog' in this one reared a lamb. During a howling sou -westerly a motherless lamb'took shelter by the dog's kennel, and tho dog, for ( reasons of his own, let hijn stay there, and made friends with,him. Merino sheep naturally keeping well away, from a doe kennel, there was always plenty of grass for the lamb, who thrived, and stayed there , till he was a four-tooth when the dog turned savage, and naa to be destroyed. . Bealey Bros, (sons of Samuel) cut up and sold what remained of the station in 1910 and Nowell retired to England. At the end the place consisted of about seven thousand acres of freehold land and 6000 sheep. The outstation and land on the Bakaia had been sold to the Government some years before, and is now, the Mead, settlement. ■ , When the Bealeys sold, James Clucas bought the charming old homestead, in which he still resides. Camla (Runs 46, 47, 94). Camla lay on the Selwyn below Haldon, which also bounded it towards the Rakaia. • It ran down tho Selwyn to" about the present main south railway, and contained nearly thirty thousand acres. 4 Runs 46 and 47, which were the lower or eastern portion of the station, were taken by Phillips • and Twigger in 1852, and Captain IlfVhard < Westenra took up run 94 just above them, in 1853, and bought them out- about the saine time, j Captain Westenra was a relative of j Lord Rossmore, and named the station after Camla Dale," a property of His in Ireland. Prom Captain Westenra the placo passed to his sons,' Richard i'arker, -and "Warner, known as Westenra brothers. The present brand "Z" was registered in 1854. , The original was right on the Selwyn riverbed, which then consisted of beautiful flats with creeks running through them, and full of native game, but all this was washed away in the great flood of 1868, which also drowned 3000 Camla sheep—mostly imported from Australia. The house was then rebuilt on the site of the present one, but the woolshed remains . where it was, and must be one of the oldest standing in Canterbury. Camla has never changed hands, belonging now to Derrick Warner Westenra, grandson of the original owner. It is only a farm now, but until about 1910, when the present proprietor bought the interests of the other beneficiaries, it was still a station carrying nearly 7000 sheep on some eign thousand five hundred acres of ; and fifteen hundred of leasehold. Tho Fivie settlement was part of the ireellosd' (To be continued.)

CORRECTIONS. Mt. Thomas (Runs 234 and Part 66). —Correction of matter which appeared in section published on Saturday, June 2ist:—The first part of Mt. Thomas was taken up in 1851—not by Torlesse, but by John Carteret Boys, another of Captain Thomas's surveyors. It was Boys

(Continued at foot of next column.)

who sold or forfeited it to Browa i* 11 1 have° thank several readers f« corrections to previous notes:— Waireka.—Anson's partner in «us station was . Halswell and Landsdoim.—Brake's homestead was not where &wekly» but where Vale Boyil (lately tml bv J L. Turnbull) is situated. Gninness's Bun.—T. Barrett was ml the owner of the hoteL Hia kMMstei \ vas W herc the Branthwaites live «t present, on the property recently p«K cluised by Sir R. Heatoa Bhodes at presented by him to the people of "Bit Tai'U as a park. Springs Station. —Fitzgerald'» &es4 stockman's name was Wkite, m| Vf right.