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Kermode’s name, a proof that Glenmark was already showing a profit. However, Moore made no effort to develop a second great estate. He acquired only a further 1500 acres. When the partnership was dissolved in 1873 he took over both 6000 acres freehold and the 66,000 acres of pastoral leasehold, but he made no efforts to secure the latter and sold the freehold over the years 1876 to 1878.

At the end of 1863 a large purchase of Crown land took place which was significant for the future of Ashburton. In November, John Grigg bought 2135 acres astride the lower swampy reaches of the River Hinds and just inland from the site of the present Longbeach homestead. Most writers—and Grigg has been more written about than anyone else in the region—date his first purchases from 1864. During this latter year, he applied for fifty-two sections of an area of almost 4700 acres, and in 1865 he added a further fifty sections to bring his freehold to more than 12,000 acres. This speedy acquisition was unparalleled in Ashburton land history. Grigg’s total reached 32,000 acres when he completed his larger buying in 1873. John McLean’s 30,000 acres is not comparable; it was acquired more slowly and deviously. When Grigg came south from Auckland in 1863, the farmers of Tai Tapu had scarcely begun to demonstrate what could be achieved by draining the land about the lower Halswell and Selwyn rivers and Ellesmere was still probably as swampy as Longbeach. But Grigg saw what could be done, had the money available from his banker brother-in-law and partner, Thomas Russell—he is said to have worked on a £50,000 overdraft—and he was determined to begin large scale agricultural farming as soon as possible.

In 1864 a new form of pastoral management appeared in the region. Matthew Holmes, who had come to New Zealand as the representative of Scottish financial interests, known usually as ‘Hankey and Co’ and later as the ‘Canterbury and Otago Association’, bought 1320 acres out of Acton. As already mentioned, he took up land along the river bank between the twenty acre sections bought by the Rhodes brothers. Chapman had previously offered Acton for sale and so Holmes may have purchased the lease already. Otherwise it is possible that he forced Chapman to sell by cutting off the water supply for his sheep. Holmes quickly added to the freehold for by 1866 the association held 8000 acres and still leased 64,000 acres of run. This group also owned land in South Canterbury at Pareora and the Levels, and the three