NEW ZEALAND GLENMARK HOUSE AND SHEEP RUN * PORTER’S PASS SPRINGFIELD STAGECOACH AT GLACIER HOTEL DEVIL’S PUNCH BOWL BEALEY

NEW  ZEALAND

   GLENMARK HOUSE AND SHEEP RUN 

 PORTER’S  PASS  *  SPRINGFIELD STAGECOACH AT GLACIER HOTEL

 DEVIL’S PUNCH BOWL BEALEY, CASTLE HILL.

Written from first-hand research by George W. Randall, co-founder in July 1996 and former Vice Chairman Kinloch Castle Friends' Association.

Late  19^th  Century  photographs  from  the  albums  of  George  Bullough, 
 collected  during  his  three  year-long Grand World  Tour  1892-1895.

B L O G   7 5   *   ALBUM XII 

*<>*<>* Time of George Bullough's visit to New Zealand November 1894. *<>*<>*
    

FINE EXAMPLE OF A NEW ZEALAND RESIDENCE (Glenmark)
Album XII   *   Image 1   *   Detail from full size 8½ x 6 inches.

FINE EXAMPLE OF A NEW ZEALAND RESIDENCE

Album XII   *   Image 1   *   Detail from full size 8½ x 6 inches. 

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The twenty albums contain around seven hundred images of  the places visited
in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.

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We are beginning Blog 75 with

ALBUM XII - NEW ZEALAND  

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        GLENMARK  -  “A Fine Example of a New Zealand Residence.”  

Glenmark house “stood in the midst of beautifully laid out gardens.” 
Taking seven years to construct it was designed by Samuel Charles Farr utilising concrete, a technological innovation at the time. The height of the house “was about thirty-five feet, the rooms on the basement (ground) and upper floor were fifteen feet floor to the ceiling.” 

“The furniture, much of it especially imported from England, along with the fittings were described as being “sumptuous”, their cost, according to the report in The Star of 24^th of January 1891 to be “no less a sum than £11,000.” 

“Each room had its elaborate fittings, from costly white marble mantelpieces to ornamental ceilings with unique cornices and centre ornaments of elegant designs, dadoings, friezes and borders producing wonderful contrasts with harmonies of colour.”

Areas of the  ground floor were laid with the most intricate tessellated pavement, upstairs being reached by a magnificent marble staircase. Fine paintings and tapestries adorned the walls, “the proprietor sparing neither money nor trouble to improve his residence.” 

 

Glenmark Station Stables. Copyright: Heritage New Zealand.

The large and extensive stables, also built of concrete, could accommodate fifty 

horses and included a granary, smithy, coach houses and full length fodder lofts.
Like Glenmark house they were designed by Samuel Charles Farr.
Regrettably the passage of times means they have by lost most of their ornamental 

and functional embellishments such as the bell tower, courtyard and pigeon cotes,
but their sheer size ensures they remain an impressive sight.

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From Brett's Handy Guide to New Zealand 1890.

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SPRINGFIELD COACH, BEALEY, NEW ZEALAND

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Standing at 2,140 feet above sea level the hotel proprietor in the 1890’s was 

James O’Malley, an ex-policeman. He moved to the Terminus Hotel - 

also known as the Otira Hotel - Otira in 1901 to be succeeded by thirty-four year 

old John Henry Fletcher an-émigré from Sheffield, England, who had previously 

been proprietor of a general store in Rangiora about sixteen 

miles north of Christchurch.

SPRINGFIELD COACH, BEALEY, NEW ZEALAND (Glacier Hotel left) 

Album XII   *   Image 2   *   Size 8 x 5½   *   J.R. 500 
Original photographer James Ring.

Cobb & Co’s stagecoach is photographed on the West Coast Road between Canterbury 

and Westland at the Glacier Hotel, Bealey, where the horses were changed.

THE PHOTOGRAPHER

James Ring was born in the south London (England) district of Camberwell 

on the 6^th of April 1856, the youngest son of Harriet and Stephen Ring, 

a carpenter.

Records state that aged sixteen he was working as an “errand boy” 

and in the 1870’s 
 “trained as a photographer with Edward Allen & Frank Rowell, 

25, Winter Street, Boston, Massachusetts.”

                                     

By 1879, aged twenty-three, he is in New Zealand, working in a photographic shop 

and described as being “a first class artist with many years’ experience in London studios.” 

James arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on the 16^th of July 1879 after 105 days

on board the 1,139 ton iron sailing ship Pleione and set up a studio. 

Less than four months later, due to ill-health, he moved and settled in the 
west-coast town of Greymouth on South Island working in the Mawhera Quay 
studio of William Herbert Perkins. Here he was able to record the frequent 
shipwrecks  and floods that are very much a part of Greymouth’s history.

In 1881 James Ring took over the business.

On the 17^th  of April following year, in St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 

Greymouth, a church he was to be associated with for most of his life,
he married Kate Maria Vinsen, “a milliner” originally from Cambridge, 

England. They had three sons, Leslie, James and Claude.

James undertook numerous photographic expeditions the resulting images of 

which he offered for sale and today are an invaluable record of West Coast life 

in the 1880’s. Although portrait commissions were the backbone

 of Ring’s business, fortunately he foresaw opportunity in photographing the less

 favourite, the unfamiliar and spectacular scenes and events in this new colony. Consequently he built-up an extensive folio of outdoor images;

spectacular scenery, gold and coal mining and establishment of new settlements; 

“one thousand photographs alone of West Coast scenes”, packs of “fifty-two

 of which he offered - post free - to all  parts of the world for £2:12:0d.”

An astute businessman, Ring also marketed his photographs individually 
or in bound ready-made albums.

At the height of his business he employed eight assistants at his  studios in Reefton 
and Hokitika as well as Greymouth. Regrettably around 1924 fire destroyed
 a number of his negatives, after which he amalgamated his business with 

Lawrence Andrew Inkster, the firm being known as Ring and Inkster until his
 retirement in 1929 aged seventy-three.

James Ring died on the 19^th of July 1939.

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PORTERS PASS

Album XII   *   Image 3   *   Size 8 x 5½   *  No. 603  J.R. 
 Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth.

James Ring’s photograph shows Porters Pass, elevation of 3,081 feet / 939 metres,

as it descends towards Springfield in the Southern Alps of Canterbury,

South Island, New Zealand.

In 1849, the Canterbury Association government surveyor, twenty-four year old 

British born Charles Obins Torlesse, accompanied by local Maori guides, 

became the first European to climb the slopes between the Big Ben and, 

named after him, Torlesse mountain ranges.

Torlesse was followed in the late 1850’s by men with picks and shovels who 

created the first track over Porters Pass financed by a government grant scheme. 

Stretches of this rugged mountain route as used by Cobb & Co.

Stagecoaches are still visible within today’s conservation park boundaries.

The pass was named in 1858 by Alfred Porter, the youngest of three brothers.

The eldest, Joshua, (1823- 1884) arrived with Christchurch founder Robert Godley 

inearly 1850 becoming a lawyer, later a magistrate and mayor of Christchurch;

David, arrived with the Canterbury Pilgrims in December 1850 and after 

initially farming with  his younger brother Alfred, became surveyor and 

map maker at Whanganui and Wellington, North Island.

Alfred, the youngest arrived aboard the 640 ton New Zealand immigrant 

sailing ship Cashmere in 1853, shortly after his two siblings. 

In June 1858 Alfred and David, 

leased a 25,000 acre high country sheep run, naming their homestead near 

Spring Creek, Castle Hill after striking a massive bed of limestone rock.

In October 1864 the Porters sold Castle Hill to John (1837-1912), and Charles Enys (1840-1891), originally from Penryn, Cornwall, England, who were in partnership with Edward Curry. 

Charles Enys, was a geologist, botanist and talented watercolour artist, one of his numerous paintings of 
Castle Hill (shown right ) depicts their pit-sawn timber cottage called  Trelissik.*

*  From “The Vision Splendid” by Stephanie Owen Reeder

                       

In 1891 after the death of his brother, and inheriting property back in  

Cornwall, England, John Enys leased (possibly sold) Castle Hill to 

Augustus George Stronach who sold it in 1897 to the 

German explorer and geologist, Heinrich von Haast, (1822 - 1867), 

founder of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch.

The Porter name is recalled today in Porters Pass, Porters Flat, 

Porter Heights Ski Field, Porter River and Porter Place in Castle Hill village.

The Enys name is widely remembered by the highest peak in the 
Craigieburn Range, the 7,198 foot high Mount Enys.

Recommended reading:

“Porters in My Past” by John Ewan

Published 2015   *   ISBN: 978-0-473-29166-2

“The Vision Splendid” by Stephanie Owen Reeder

Charles Enys (Pages 142 – 147)

National Library of Australia 2011 * ISBN 978-0-642-27724-4

“John and Charles Enys, Castle Hill Runholders, 

1864-1892”

by Jenny Abrahamson 2017 ISBN: 978-1-927167-31-1

CASTLE HILL

Album XII   *   Image 6   *   Size 8 x 5½   *   No. 605 J.R.  
Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth
     

John Davies Enys was born on the 11^th of October 1837 
at the Cornish village of Enys, near Penryn, the 13^th Century 
Enys family seat,the second youngest of the three sons of John Samuel Enys, a mining engineer and scientist, and Catherine Gilbert.

 (John’s middle name, Davies, being the Christian name of his maternal grandfather, engineer, author, politician and president of 

London's Royal Society, Davies Gilbert.) 

John was educated at Harrow School and while in his teens attended lectures at the Geological Society, London. His ever inquisitive nature 
led him to become an “inveterate collector 
and keen amateur naturalist.”

Aged twenty-four he accompanied

thirty-seven year old John Barton Arundel 

Acland, (son of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 10^th  Bt.), on his return to New Zealand 

arriving at 
Lyttleton on board the 1,129 ton clipper Chrysolite after seventy-four days at sea,
on the 27^th of July 1861. 

Acland was successfully pioneering a 
high-country sheep farm on the 
Canterbury Plains 
with Charles Tripp, John Enys’s cousin.

In June 1864 twenty-four year old 
Charles Enys joined his brother an 
in October the brothers took over Castle Hill run in central Canterbury.
After their failed attempt to buy Akitio Station they leased it in 1873. 
Despite all their efforts the bachelor brothers “found high-country sheep management 
difficult and burdensome (and) only survived with substantial support of their family.”

Both brothers were interested in the natural sciences and Castle Hill “provided a rich store”

 of bird, insect and plant life as well as pristine “beds of marine fossils from the Tertiary 

period buried in striking limestone formations”, brother Charles’s sphere of interest.

John in particular travelled widely in pursuit of his hobby and as a result of his detailed 

study of the local flora and fauna he became known as “an enthusiastic, capable and 

indefatigable naturalist”, recognised as “one of the earliest authorities” of New Zealand’s 

moths and butterflies. Having youthful experience of stone carving 

“and an appreciation of the quality of Castle Hill stone (John) donated stone for the

pulpit and font in Christchurch Cathedral.”

John Enys had a high sense of public duty and was a prominent figure in public life 

as a Justice of the Peace, governor of Canterbury Collegiate Union and founding 

member of the Upper Waimakariri Road Board, amongst many offices.

In 1889 Charles Enys became seriously ill and died in January 1891, John returned to 

Cornwall the same year. His elder brother, Francis, died in 1906 and John, who never married,
 passed away on the 7^th of November 1912.

“John and Charles Enys, Castle Hill Runholders 1864-1892”

by Jenny Abrahamson     *    Published 2017 
ISBN: 978-1-927167-31-1

Historical Paintings by Charles Enys - Castle Hill

John Enys sent many specimens of New Zealand flora and fauna back to the family home.

The Enys Gardens at St. Gluvias, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9LB are open to the public.

For details telephone: 01326 377 621   or   e-mail: info@enysgardens.org.uk

CASTLE HILL

Album XII   *   Image 6   *  Detail from original size 8 x 5½   *   No. 605 J.R.

      Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth.

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SNOW GATE CASTLE HILL

Album XII   *   Image 7   *   Size 8 x 5½   *   No. 608 J.R.
      Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth.

SNOW GATE CASTLE HILL

Album XII   *   Image 7   *   Detail from original size 8 x 5½   *   No. 608 J.R.
      Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth.

SNOW GATE CASTLE HILL

Album XII  *  Image 7  *  Detail from original size 8 x 5½  *  No. 608 J.R.
      Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth.

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DEVIL’S PUNCHBOWL, BEALEY

Album XII   *   Image 5   *   Size 8 x 5½   *   No. 514  J.R.
      Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth.

Located in Arthur's Pass National Park 

and surrounded by a magnificent 
beech forest the Bealey River cascades 500 feet into the natural 

rock depression called Devil's Punchbowl at its base 

and then onward to join the Waimakariri River.

                                                                        Backpacker Guide New Zealand

                                                                              

DEVIL’S PUNCPUNHBOWL, BEALEY  No. 513  J.R

Original photographer James Ring, Greymouth   *   Size 8 x 5½  

 Albumen silver print - Museum of New Zealand  - circa 1880  Arthur's Pass National Park

   

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REVIEWED WITH UPDATE 31 DECEMBER 2023

GEORGE W. RANDALL RESEARCH AND PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE

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