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The Early Canterbury Runs: Containing the First, Second and Third (new) Series

Acton — (Runs 87 to 91, and 128, 129 and 132)

page 97

Acton
(Runs 87 to 91, and 128, 129 and 132)

The Rakaia river delayed occupation of the country to the south of it for a year or more. A few runs were applied for in 1852 but most of them were abandoned again, and generally speaking, the runs there were not allotted until 1853. I do not think any station between the Rakaia and Rangitata was started before 1854. I have not been able to find the original papers relating to many of them.

Beginning at the sea, Acton was the first station on the south bank of the Rakaia. It ran along the sea coast for about twelve miles and up the river to a point about a mile west of the present railway, and it included the river islands adjoining it. It was made up of eight runs of nearly eighty thousand acres altogether. Runs 90 and 91 (the country on the Rakaia nearest the railway) were taken up by Edward Chapman in July, 1853. Runs 87 and 88 were taken up by Rhodes Brothers, the great pioneers of Canterbury squatting, in May, 1853, and Run 89 by Joseph Hawdon in May, 1853. Run 128 was taken up by Leach, and Run 129 by Edward Merson Templer in November and December respectively, 1853. In 1854 and the following years Chapman bought all these runs from the men who had taken them up, I have been told, before any of them were stocked, except the Rhodes.' Runn 132, an island in the river, was taken up by Chapman in January, 1857.

page 98

Chapman called the station Acton after the place where his father, a banker in Middlesex, lived. A Canterbury Gazette gives Chapman as having 4500 sheep on fifty-five thousand acres in 1858, which was probably just before he bought the Rhodes' Runs.

William Dunford was Chapman's head shepherd or overseer. He also kept an accommodation house on the Rakaia in the early 'fifties. After he left Acton, Dunford went to Lavington.

Early in 1864 the Hon. Mathew Holmes bought two thousand acres of freehold on the run and soon afterwards Chapman sold him the whole station. Holmes made these purchases for Hankey and Company, who were afterwards called the Canterbury and Otago Land Association, which was afterwards merged in the N.Z. and Australian Land Company.

The original homestead was near the riverbank about a mile and a-half below the railway. One or two gums and some broom still mark the place. When Holmes bought the station and began employing a lot of hands, he had to move it to the present site because, he said, 'the men found it too near the pub.'

Hassell was the company's first manager. He was succeeded by Donald McLean then Neal McLean. Next came W. L. Allan, a most enterprising and able man who grew wheat at Acton on a very large scale and developed water races. The Land Company's last manager was Thomas Blakely.

By 1878 the Company had bought enough freehold on the run to carry 30,000 sheep, but before the station was finally cut up and sold in 1904-5, sales of land had reduced its capacity to 6000 or 7000. The homestead now belongs to the Estate of Thomas Langley, who died in 1923.

After selling Acton, Chapman bought Drayton on the Ashburton where he died. It is unnecessary to give particulars of the other early owners as they are all more closely associated with other stations; the Rhodes brothers with the Levels, Templer with Coringa, and Hawdon with Craigieburn. I suppose Leach was page 99Leach of Snowdon but am not sure.