Jeffries Of Bryndwr

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32382, 22 August 1970, Page 7

Jeffries Of Bryndwr

(By HJ.K.) So indelibly is the Anglican tradition written in the city of Christchurch that it is somewhat salutary to remember that for the outsider, there may be attached to the province of which it is the centre, a contrary impression. Kipling spoke of Canterbury as a territory “given over to Scotsmen, their sheep and the devil’s own high winds.” Again, and quite properly so, we are reminded that the Deans brothers were not commemorating Shakespeare's Stratford in naming the river Avon, but the stream which flowed beside their ancestral home of Riccarton in Scotland. Now, of course, even that tradition is so submerged in the sentiment of native bush preservation, that the name “Kilmarnock” has almost as little cpngruity in the area as a claymore in the hands of a Maori chief.

To the north, however, we are confronted with a Cambrian eruption more thoroughly consistent:—ldris Road, Glandovey Road, Snowdon Road, Plynlimon Road, Garreg Road and finally' Jeffreys Road. This last, though not so obviously Welsh, is so on the authority of Macdonald’s “History of Early Canterbury Settlers” and is sufficient testimony that there is no kinship here with Richard Jeffries, the English naturalist, with whom the schoolboy of a bygone era may have had some familiarity through extracts from “Beavis—the Story of a Boy.” Estate Of 200 Acres James Jeffries was indeed the founder of Bryndwr and, though not one of our Pil--grims, was not far behind them, arriving in the ship Tasmania in 1853. Incidentally, assuming Macdonald to be fully authoritative, the

Waimairi Council is in some confusion in its spelling. His name apparently was not “Jeffreys.” Jeffries was a really independent settler, by all accounts, in that he need not have come to this country to seek his fortune, being already heir to an estate in Wales. He came into this inheritance on the death of his father and left Bryndwr to take over Glandyffi in 1868. His Canterbury tenure, therefore, covers a comparatively brief period of about 15 years. Before he left he appointed one Charles Clark as his agent; and it was not until 1882 that all the sections of his property which, in Bryndwr, totalled 200 acres and which had formed part of the Ham block, were finally disposed of. They netted him the handsome sum of £15,169. Charles and Stuart Meares, his nephews, benefited to the extent of a 10-acre block each. He also owned “Clearwell,” of 132 acres, which lay to the east of Papanui Road. Macdonald writes of his return to New Zealand, in the eighties, to dispose of “his Christchurch »property,” but whether this is a reference to a more central portion is not clear. His residence, of which no trace remains, stood opposite St Barnabas Church on a site lately occupied by Mr Gresson. Solitary Figure This record, while giving a clear indication of hardheadedness in his business dealing, is meagre indeed on the personal side. He arrived at the mature age of 32, having been born in the year of the death of Napoleon, 1821. By inference from the absence of the mention of any dose affinities than nephews, he was probably a

bachelor, though he may not have remained one after his return to Wales. He is a transient, solitary figure on the scene of Early Canterbury and, some would say, Macdonald’s, note provides all we need know of him. But there may be a few residents of Bryndwr, despite the mobility of today’s population, who would have their attention arrested by the figure of a man who, over a century ago, trod paths in a locality through which the modern car races speedily on verydifferent business. He would tread these paths to the verge of the Riccarton bush probably, rounding up his sheep and cattle. Although well versed in both tongues he must, occassionally, have longed to hear the lilt of his native Welsh, in conversation or in song.

Would he be oppressed by the contrast of his environment with that of his youth? The mystical Celtic strain would surely tell; more so, we may be sure, than on the more sophisticated religi-ously-emancipated Samuel Butler who in this period would be tripping back and forth across country to his station in Mesopotamia.

When he returned in the eighties to wind up his affairs, Jeffries would find a railway skirting his old eastern boundary. It is not too fanciful to imagine his travelling by train to Bryndwr. strolling leisurely along the road which is his permanent memorial, through a community of small holdings, round Garreg to Glandovey to Fendalton Road for one last loqk at the house in which he had passed 15 years, we hope not too lonely years. He died at Glandyffi on February 19, 1904, at the ripe age of eighty-three.