Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 056

Transcript

John Scott Caverhill was then about 1857, a fine athletic looking man about 46, with strong open decided features and a peculiar light coloured, but strong crop of hair, from which his sobriquet of White Headed Bob. He then had Motunau run, up North, was a jolly merry, loud voiced man, and reckoned a thorough judge of sheep and stock, and well up in squatting matters. Like others he had his ups and downs and reverses.

William Guise Brittan was one of the very earliest settlers and had some connection in England with the formation of the Canterbury Association, as Secretary or other office. There is, I think, on record a memo giving him certain sections of land as a gratuity for his services. One of these is the Englefield section originally 50 acres, now the Hon. Mr Stevens. In the fifties, cricket matches were played in a nice paddock opposite the House, and W.G. B. used to play with a substitute runner. The old trees that remain were his planting. On the corner between the dwelling house and the River, there was a “cob” built malthouse, used I think first by Mr Fooks, and afterwards by Hamilton Ward and Croft when they started the Brewery, which afterwards passed to Lee, who sold to the Company, and returned to England, a young man with a fortune – He had a partner, Douglas.