Dagnam
(Run 135)

This run of five thousand acres next above Worlingham was taken up in 1852, or early in 1853, by Crackenthorp John Wentworth Cookson. The run lists give 1854 as the rate of the original license, but Cookson told me himself that he was living there in 1853. Cookson was related to the Neave family at Home, and named his station after their place in Essex.

Dagnam was very light country and only carried about 1000 sheep. Cookson bought no freehold there. He sold the run to Joseph Pearson of Burnt Hill in 1857, and it continued to be part of Burnt Hill until Dixon bought the freehold of it in 1890.

After selling the run, Cookson went in for farming for a time. He died shortly before the 1914-18 War, in Lyttelton, where he had lived for many years in retirement.

In the run lists of the 'sixties, Miles and Co. are given as the tenants of Dagnam. They were Pearson's mortgagees. The area of the run is given as being over nine thousand acres. The smaller area given in the older lists was probably Cookson's estimate before the country was surveyed.