Three generations of farm managers

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33958, 26 September 1975, Page 7

Three generations of farm managers

Three generations of one family have managed a Banks Peninsula property, Willesden, in Prices Valley.

Mr G. A. Willis managed it for a brief period, then his son, Mr Mi G. Willis, who has now retired to Tai Tapu. was manager for 35 or 36 years, and now a grandson of the first Willis, Mr M. J. Willis, is in his fourth year as manager.

In the accompanying photograph, taken on the property last week, Mr M. G. Willis is on the left, with his son, Mr M. J. Willis.

That the 2000 acres property is named Willesden is purely a coincidence, according to Mr M. J. Willis, who says that they have no relationship with the owners of the property, the Kingscote family trust. Mr Willis says that Willesden is the name of a station on the London underground railway system. Mr G. A. Willis managed Gladbrook station in Central Otago and was the farm manager at Lincoln College for about three years before managing Richmond Hill at Sumner

for the late Mr George Humphreys. When Mr Humphreys died, Richmond Hill was sold and Mr Willis and his son moved to Willesden in 1935. The principal trustee of the property is Mr R. G. F. Kingscote. managing director of Fletcher Humphreys, who is a grandson of Mr Humphreys, who was also the founder of the firm.

The present Willis on Willesden gained a diploma of agriculture at Lincoln College, and then worked for the State Advances Corporation for four years as a farm appraiser before spending three years overseas during which he met his wife, who comes from Hawkes Bay, in South Africa.

Apart from 250 acres of flats the property comprises tussock hill country and rises from about 500 ft to 2500 ft. It carries a flock of 2300 Romney ewes, and

750 ewe hoggets as replacements, and a herd of 70 Angus and Hereford cows. Before Mr Humphreys acquired Willesden before World War I it was the home of Captain Joseph Price, a Canterbury pioneer who was a trader, explorer, navigator, whaler and farmer. He and another man are reputed to have travelled overland from Port Cooper or Lyttelton to Kaiapoi in 1831. A descendant has said that as far as was known the two were the only Europeans to see the Kaiapohia pa before it was destroyed by Te Rauparaha in 1831. Captain Price and his wife began farming in Prices Valley in 1852 and before it was taken over by Mr Humphreys and renamed the property was known as Kelvin Grove. In 1966 the old homestead. on the property, built by Price at the end of the last century, was the scene of a reunion of the descendants of he and his wife.