205 Paton Road, Hope
A cob cottage built by Edward Green in about 1852 (one account says 1842), bought with 653 acres by Major Robert Mercer Paton on 25 August 1862, and home to the family for six generations.
Scroll to move through time
How Beacon Hill came together block by block, grew to 752 acres under the Major, and was sold down to the strip the family holds today. The old boundaries are traced from the family’s plans and pinned to real aerial photographs.
Aerial 1980–81: LINZ, CC BY 4.0. Old boundaries traced from the family plans and fitted to today’s boundary lines.
1851–1856
The flat land below the hills was surveyed into sections and granted to settlers. Eight grants make up what would become Beacon Hill.
Edward Green built a cob cottage here in about 1852 (a 1978 account says 1842), the start of the homestead. The hill country behind was still Crown land.
1855–1862
Green bought Fell's section and 50 acres of Rawson's, then in 1861 sold 115 acres to Edward Webby. Webby bought the Busch, Barnicoat and Kelling blocks too, and took Crown grants for the hill country in April 1862.
Webby could not write. He signed the deeds with his mark.
25 August 1862
Less than four months after landing at Nelson from the Lord Worsley, Major Robert Mercer Paton bought all nine of Webby's blocks, A to I: 653 acres for £3,000.
1865–1873
The Major took a Crown grant for a small Aniseed Valley block, L, in 1865 and added Sections 40 and 58, blocks J and K. His 1873 certificate of title covered 752 acres.
This is the largest single title in the family papers. A 1978 account says the farm was later extended further into the hills.
3 September 1914
After the Major's death the family began to sell. Part of Section 35 went to James Hart in 1907, and in 1911 Lots 1, 3, 4 and 6 of Plan 332 went to A. Malcolm, W. L. Stratford and Henry Paton.
On 3 September 1914 George William Lankow bought Lot 2 of Plan 332, which Sybil called ‘Willow Pad’ and Hill: 197 acres. No title for it has been found. The shading is an estimate from Plan 332 and the 1936 title: the rest of blocks E and I, beside the strip the family kept, measures about 195 acres.
Some of it is back in the family: two of Roger and Rebekah's hill blocks lie inside it, and part of Daryl and Julie's.
1902–1920
The Major died in 1901. The land passed through the Public Trustee to five of his children, with its income going first to his widow and her sister. Over the next twenty years most of it was sold: part of Section 35 to James Hart (1907), lots on Plan 332 to A. Malcolm, W. L. Stratford, G. W. Lankow and Henry Paton (1911–1916), Henry's hill block to Percy Busch (1919) and more to Litchfield (1920).
Sybil remembered the pieces by name: Lankow's ‘Willow Pad’ and hill, Malcolm's ‘gorse hill’, the Stratfords' ‘German Bush’ and Busch's ‘Hill Block’ with McHardy's gully. Their places on the map are estimates, and the gorse hill's is a guess.
By 1936 a strip of 257 acres was left, running from Paton Road up into the hills.
21 April 1937
The Paton estate put the last of Beacon Hill up for tender, and Wallace Dron, Sybil's husband, bought it. In 1958 he passed a half share to their son Bruce.
Today
The family still holds the heart of the 1937 purchase, and more of the hill country behind it. Roger and Rebekah have the homestead block at 205 Paton Road and most of the hills. Daryl and Julie have the northern hill, with their house. Harrison and Jess, with Roger and Rebekah, have 191 Aniseed Valley Road.
The faint outline shows the Major's 752 acres of 1873.
1863–1901
Family tradition says Emily Stafford paid for the paintings; the Major's own portrait is a modern one
Photographed at Beacon Hill in September 2026. Two sitters are certain and Frances Mercer is probable. The others are best guesses from dates, dress and the family’s notes; labels on the backs of the canvases may settle them.
The Waimea when the Patons arrived
Plans from the family papers
Photographs from the Beacon Hill Estate