South Canterbury money built Holly Lea

Press, 8 October 1977, Page 15

South Canterbury money built Holly Lea

By

JOHN WILSON

Its uncertain future has brought the Christchurch mansion, Holly Lea, into the public eye of late. At a time when buying or building a suburban house of about 1000 square feet strains the pockets of even the reasonably wellpaid, many people may have stopped to wonder from where, in this country, came the money needed to build a house of 23,000 square feet and 40 rooms. Ihe answer is from an enormous estate which embraced almost 50,000

acres of South Canterbury’s rich flats and downland. The estate has long since been broken up into smaller farms and grazing runs, but the house in which Allan McLean lived before he moved to Christchurch and had Holly Lea built is still standing. The Waikakahi estate was only one of the great holdings which the McLean brothers accumulated after their arrival from the goldfields of Australia. The others were Laghmor, near Ashburton, and Morven Hills, in North Otago.

The brothers bought the first freehold land which later became part of the Waikakahi estate from a William Harris in the mid1860s. By the time they had finished adding to their holdings, they owned almost 48,000 acres free-' hold, most of the land between the Waitaki and Waihao Rivers, from the coast some miles inland. The only areas which were not the McLeans’ in this block of country were a few farms that had been bought by small settlers before the McLeans could get their hands on them, and some government reserves which had been set aside for quarantine, education, and ferry purposes.

When John and Allan McLean dissolved their partnership in 1880, Allan chose Waikakahi as his share of the family’s holdings, and for the next 18 years he ruled his 48,000 acres with as much style and authority as any ninetee n t h-century British landed magnate. Allan McLean ran Waikakahi as, primarily, a sheep run. But his years on the estate were also great cropping years. Areas of three to four thousand acres would be let on contract for the growing of wheat and turnips, the yields of wheat

in the first season often being between 60 and 70 bushels to the acre. Forty teams of horses at a time, working blocks of up to 8000 acres, was a not uncommon sight. McLean also broke up, resowed, and fenced much land for pasture.

Sometime in this period, perhaps before 1880, a 21-room “Mansion House,” known then and still known today as “The Valley,” was built for Allan McLean, his housekeeper, and his five servants. Built of wood, plastered inside and with an iron roof, “The Valley” was no match for some of the other mansions built by great landowners in this period, but is still a larger house than it looks in its present setting of mature trees.

Below the house was a woolshed and stables and more distant still a manager’s house. A building containing 16 bunks was erected to provide shelter for swaggers.

The gardens were the glory of “The Valley” in Allan McLean’s heyday, Peacocks strutted over and through 10 acres of lawns, shrubbery, and garden; more distant from the house were a two-acre or-

namental lake and a fiveacre orchard with oranges grapes, and lemons in a conservatory. All this was sheltered by a 30-acre plantation of mixed varieties of trees.

Allan lived in a style to match this setting. He travelled round his estate in a waggonette with white pannelling, and wore a plum-coloured suit, bow tie, and white socks. All dealings with the estates workers were handled through his man ager. T. N. Brodrick, whc surveyed the estate into smaller runs and sections at the time it was broken

up in 1898, found Allan “a handsome, gentlemanly old fellow.”

Although Brodrick was there to dismember his beloved Waikakahi, Allan served him up “a nice dinner with plenty of good champagne and port wine.”

Brodrick had been preceded at “The Valley” by another visitor, John McKenzie, the Minister of Lands of the Liberal Government which was actively encouraging the break-up of the country’s large estates for closer settlement by small farmers.

What passed between these two Highland Scots on the night of McKenzie’s visit is not recorded. But a few weeks after the meeting the sale of Waikakahi to the Government was announced. The estate was valued separately by McLean and the Government, the two valuations differing by only £48.000. The price finally agreed on was £326,616. With this money in his pocket, McLean left Waikakahi for Christchurch, where some of the money was soon being spent in the building of Holly Lea. Such was McLean’s distress at having to part with his estate

that, at least., according to tradition, he. never returned to Waikakahi. Once the estate had been bought by the Gov-

ernment and subdivided, a ballot was held (in March, 1899, at the Waimate Courthouse) to decide which settlers should

secure which farms and runs. Present at the ballot was a reporter from the Chicago “Tribune,” Henry Demarest Lloyd, who des-

cribed the scene in one of the books about New Zealand which he wrote on his return to the United States. Lloyd’s books did

much to secure for New Zealand the reputation it enjoyed at this time of being “in the van of civilisation.”

At the ballot the settlers were competing for 154 freehold farms of 10 to 1473 acres. 14 grazing runs, and 140 farms on lease-in-perpetuity. One settler, successful in the ballot, asked how he like his holding, replied: “Sure and it’s fair enough, but, begorra, it’s steeper than it looked on the map.” In a clearing sale on Waikakahi in March of that year 76,931 sheep, 24 working draught horses, 16 unbroken draught horses, and 82 hacks and harness horses were offered for sale.

In McLean's day, Waikakahi was mainly sheep country; most of the settlers initially cultivated their new land, but much of it has since reverted to grazing. The town of Morven grew up to serve the settlers. By 1901 it had a population of 336 and in 1903 boasted two stores, a bakery, a butchery, two smithies, a creamery, a public school, and a railway station that doubled as post office. Nearby Waimate also received a boost from the closer settlement of the Waikakahi block.

After the subdivision, the homestead block of 640 acres on which “The Valley” stood was taken over by the manager of the dismembered estate, George McLean (who was not related to Allan). In 1912, the property came into the hands of Frank Bailey, who sold it, two years later, to George Ruddenklau.

Ruddenklau held the property for 40 years. Some time before he sold it, however, he vacated the house, and it stood empty for some years. In 1955, Mr S. F. Bailey, a son of the Frank Bailey who had owned the property briefly before World War I, realised a life-long ambition and bought “The Valley” and the homestead block.

The house and garden were run down (there was

a dead sheep on the front doorstep), but Mr Bailey set to work restoring the property as best he could. He saved the trees and. thanks to him and his wife's care, within the house the front rooms still have their original linenfinished wall-paper, floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases, and marble fireplaces. Today, the house is occupied by Mr Trevor Bailey, the third generation of the Bailey family to live at “The Valley,” his wife and young family. To the extent they can, they maintain the grounds, and when the visitor leaves the trees along the drive and sees the house across its expanse of sloping lawn it has still a grand appearance.

But, understandably, a young farming couple working a 640-acre farm on their own cannot maintain the entire area of gardens as they were in Allan McLean’s day.

The woolshed which served Waikakahi survived until about 10 years ago. when it burned down. The old stables were then converted for use as a shearing shed. Down the road the manager’s house, known as “The Station,” still stands.

Few people in Christchurch may be aware that Allan McLean’s other house, besides Holly Lea, is still standing in South Canterbury. But the McLean Institute, founded on the money McLean made out of Waikakahi, maintains an interest in “The Valley.” In October, 1958, on the institute’s golden jubilee, a special meeting of the board of the institute was held at “The Valley,” and 10 years later, in 1968, the board made a return visit to the property. No plans have been made yet, but it is in the minds of at least some associated with the McLean Institute to renew the link with Waikakahi next year, 10 years after the last visit.