Barrosa Station Passed In At £67,000

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30940, 22 December 1965, Page 14

Barrosa Station Passed In At £67,000

Barrosa Station, of 24,098 acres situated on the Ashburton Gorge road 35 miles from Ashburton was passed in at £67,000 when it was offered for sale as a going concern at a public auction in Ashburton yesterday.

About 30 persons attended the auction at which the bidding opened at £60,000. There were a further seven bids of £lOOO each. The station was taken up in the early years of settlement of the Ashburton County and was originally called Clent Hills. It was renamed Barrosa by LieutenantColonel R. B. Neill, who took up the run in 1913. It has since remained in his family’s possession. The property comprises 3465 acres freehold and 20,633 acres Government leasehold. It carries 6400 sheep and 120 breeding cows and replacements. The bulk of the leasehold area is hill country, while the freehold area comprises mainly flat arable downs and terraces, 235 acres being cultivated. The homestead is a twostorey building of nine main rooms, set in extensive gardens with a tennis court and swimming pool. Then is a wide range of outbuildings, including garages and implement sheds, a cottage, and seven-stand woolshe*'. Clent Hills, the station's original name, comprised four Mocks totalling more than 50,000 acres extending from

Stour creek to Lake Heron and took in the Old Man range. F. G. P. Leach took up the first portion in January, 1857, and, with his partner. John Dudley, added the other runs between 1857 and 1860. The runs were sold to Thomas Rowley about 1859. Rowley was one of the first men to put up wire fences in the back country, subdividing his flats with them in 1863. Rowley sold Clent Hills about 1865 to Robert Tooth, who also owned Alford Station in the Ashburton forks. Tooth’s nephew, Frederick Tooth, took over the stations when his uncle died and in 1859 he sold Clent Hills for £lO,OOO to A. E Peache, of Mount Somers. In April, 1885, Peache sold the station to Thomas Harrison, who took his brother James into partnership shortly afterwards. The old homestead was on the flat near Lake Heron but James Harrison built the new homestead at Stour creek, and in 1898 he bought out his brother’s share of the station. Changed Hands The run changed hands again in 1908, when A. R. C. Kilian, of Lake Heron, purchased it. Lieutenant-Colonel Neill purchased the station in 1913, and renamed it Barrosa. After World War I the Government took over the Old Man range

portion of the run (comprising about half the area) and settled a returned soldier on it. This is known today as Clent Hills. Lieutenant • Colonel Neill moved the working buildings to the Stour stream, near the new homestead, and the old homestead has served as an outstation.