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Company. It was a private company, the finance being contributed entirely by seven shareholders, most of them Ulstermen. Among them were David Morrow and Samual K. Bassett who had retired from their farm implement business in 1880.

Morrow’s position was a strange one. He had invested as much as anyone in the project and, moreover, accepted the position of manager. Yet immediately afterwards he doubled his extensive land holdings in Ashburton County. Back in 1877-8, just before retiring from business he had bought 6345 acres out of the centre of Shepherds Bush run and named the property ‘Montalto’ after a house near Belfast, Ireland. He ran a large number of sheep on this property and made numerous improvements to it including, most notably, the collecting into heaps of the stones which covered the land and the establishment of plantations of mixed pines and English trees among these piles of stones. At the auction of runs in 1889 he outbid the holders for the remaining 7300 acres of Shepherds Bush. Failing to secure a suitable tenant for the property, he put in a manager, Thomas Robinson.

In spite of his heavy involvement, he remained in charge of the freezing works only until 1892. He then left the company, virtually giving away his shares. This action on the part of an able and enterprising businessman vividly illustrates the hopes and fears raised by the condition of the industry at the time, when success or failure depended on a difference of a farthing a pound in the price of mutton. It throws into relief the faith of his partners who remained and built up the company and also—although they did not take the same risk—of Grigg and Cameron.

At the end of the century, when the frozen meat industry was on a firmer footing, Ashburton acquired its own freezing works. On 16 March 1899, the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company opened a plant on what had been the Fairfield estate, north of the town. In the previous June, a group of local farmers, among whom G. W. Leadley was prominent, recommended this extension of the company’s activities to John Grigg. He and his directors agreed, on condition that most of the new capital needed was raised within the county. Hugo Friedlander and a local committee disposed of sixteen hundred £10 shares:the issue was oversubscribed. There was some argument about the site. People in Tinwald wanted the buildings there; but Leadley argued that the increase in population and land values might be too dearly bought at the cost of unpleasant smells.