Stock Firm To Mark Its Centenary In Canterbury

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28679, 1 September 1958, Page 17

Stock Firm To Mark Its Centenary In Canterbury

At the middle of this month the stock and station firm of Dalgety and Company will celebrate the centenary of its establishment in Canterbury. The occasion will be marked by a function in the company’s new wool store in Moorhouse avenue which is expected to be attended by a large number of the company’s customers and friends. The new store, which is among the Inost modern in the country, will then be officially opened by the Mayor, Mr George Manning. This function Vill be held in the evening of September 18, which is 100 years and a day after the completion of a lease of part of town section 2 at Norwich quay, Lyttelton, “with the building or store theron,” from Augustus James Alport, merchant, of Lyttelton, to Richard Butler Dalgety and George Buckley, both ’ merchants, of Lyttelton, trading under the name of Dalgety, Buckley and Company. By the end of the year

this company, which was the pioneer Dalgety organisation in Canterbury, was advertising that it was prepared to purchase wool and colonial produce or advance on produce consigned to its correspondents in London, MelbOmfne ’ .Geelong and Launceston. The site at Lyttelton was retained until 1870 when the company s Lyttelton premises were burned down. This land had earlier been held by William Guise Brittan, the early Canterbury land administrator. The company opened an office in High street, Christchurch, in 1863, and TR7« ed m nt ° Cathedral square in 1878. Towards the end of the century its premises in the Square were demolished to make way for the present buildings. a . Canadian-born Founder Although Richard Butler Dalgety and Edmund Simmonds Dalgety were associated with the firm m its early days in Canterbury, the real founder was FredericK Gonnerman Dalgety a Canadian by birth who came out to Australia in 1833 at the age of :L« ye a rS '.AL 016 age ° f 29 in 1846 he decided to set up in business on his own account and laid the foundations for the present company by forming the partnership of Dalgety, Borrodale and Gore, opening his first * n Collins street. Melbourne, and it was he who initiated the extension of the Dalgety organisation to New Zealand. Buckley was a prominent early settler in Canterbury. He was a member of the Provincial Council and also of the Legislative Council. Until 1894 the. company’s buiness in Canterbury was confined to a few large Ration accounts. shipping and insurance agencies and merchandise, but in that year it took over the stock and station agency business of Miles and Company and commenced selling stock and wool by auction. At the same time it also took over that company’s wool and grain store, which was on the site of the present store in Moorhouse avenue.