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The third quarter century of settlement in Ashburton fell between the declaration of ‘no-licence’ for the Ashburton electorate in 1903 and the disappearance of that electorate in 1928. It also largely covered one phase in Ashburton’s farming history during which many small farmers grew increasingly prosperous while wheat production, having fallen to about two-thirds of that of the 1880s and 1890s, maintained a moderate but more consistent level in the face of better sheep prices. Nevertheless, it did not form a unified period. The world war of 1914-18 divided the early comparatively prosperous years from the post-war boom and slump and the anxieties of the 1920s.

The most prominent feature in the farming history of the first decade of the twentieth century was the dismemberment of some of the largest freehold properties and the very considerable reduction in the size of all but one of the others. Acton was the first of the largest estates to disappear. Its early subdivision was part of the “strategic withdrawal” of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company from most of its New Zealand holdings. W. L. Allen, local manager for the company until the end of the century, sold 10,000 acres. His successor, T. A. Blackley, offered 7800