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

Glenthorne — (Runs 289, 345, 389 and 494)

Glenthorne
(Runs 289, 345, 389 and 494)

Glenthorne lies in the fork of the Wilberforce and Harper rivers, and goes back to the main range.

It was taken up in two runs of fourteen thousand acres altogether in January, 1859, and May, 1860—I think by Major H. A. Scott, at least he was there in 1861, and I never heard of anyone being there before him.

About 1864 Dilnot Sladden rented the run and sheep from Scott for £400 a year. The 1867 winter was a bad one and in 1868 Scott had to take the place back. Sladden was born at Ash in Kent in 1842. He came to New Zealand from Tasmania and was for a time a cadet at Mt. Hutt. When he left Glenthorne he farmed at Oxford and in the North Island, but was eventually made secretary of the Meat Export Company in Wellington where he died in 1906.

Scott lived at a place he called Glenmore at the foot of the Port Hills. It was on the site of the Glenmore brick kilns. He had been in the 12th Lancers. He was a brother of W. R. Scott, of Snowdon, and was the father of Talbot Scott and H. A. Scott, the secretary of the Midland Railway Company. In 1860 he started the first volunteers in Canterbury. In the autumn of 1872 he sold Glenthorne to Captain Stephen Fisher for £4,000, and retired and went to live in Wales, where he died in 1908 at the age of ninety-three.

page 213

Fisher, the new owner, was born at St. Margaret's, in Kent, in 1818. He joined the Navy, and, after serving in various parts of the world, came to New Zealand in his ship in 1846. He liked the country so much that he left the Navy on his return to England, and in 1850 came back in the Randolph, one of the First Four Ships, to settle in Canterbury. He bought a farm near Christchurch, which he named Beckenham (at the Cashmere Hills end of Colombo Street). It has long since been cut up, and is all built over now and has given its name to a suburb of Christchurch.

Fisher was recalled to the Navy on the outbreak of the Crimean War, and served in the Baltic. When he finally retired in 1870 he was paymaster-in-chief of the Navy.

He brought his family out and settled at Beckenham in 1871. He only lived at Glenthorne for a part of every year. He had a tame Paradise duck there, which used to follow him everywhere when he went out riding. It once got into a bedroom at Mt. Algidus and mistook its reflection in the glass for another duck, and started to fight with it. It broke everything in the room before it was satisfied.

One of the Gibsons from the Waitaki was Fisher's first manager. Gibson went to New South Wales, and W. W. Morton succeeded him. When Morton left, one of Fisher's sons managed Glenthorne.

Fisher sold Glenthorne to John Finlayson, an old Scotch shepherd, in 1894, and died at Beckenham in June, 1897.

Finlayson sold Glenthorne to Mrs J. Murchison, of Lake Coleridge, in 1902, and it is still the property of her executors.