Woolston / Heathcote Cemetery Tour - Christchurch City Libraries

Area 2
Row C
No. 322
Buckley
Helen McLean wrote:
… George Buckley chose Alexandrina, younger daughter of Alexander and
Mary McLean of Coll, to be his wife. They were married, on 25 February
1860, at the home of her brother, John McLean, at Cambridge Terrace,
Christchurch. George took his bride to live at Lyttelton to be near his office
and, in 1861, their eldest son, William Frederick McLean Buckley, was born
in their home under the rugged Port Hills, overlooking the blue harbour. There
were seven children of this marriage …
W. F. M. Buckley‘s father was a businessman and politician. His mother’s family
came from the island of Coll in the Hebrides. Her brothers were well known
pastoralists. Allan had Waikakahi station. On retiring to Christchurch, he built the
famed ‘Holly Lea’ in Manchester Street which became a home for women of genteel
birth who found themselves in reduced economic circumstances. John or ‘Jock’ lived
at ‘Redcastle’, Oamaru, his home eventually becoming a Roman Catholic boys’
school. Bureaucracy decreed that a grand post office, with a clock tower, should be
built in Oamaru but left it to the locals to supply the clock. They lacked the money to
do this and W. F. M’s brother, St. John McLean Buckley, gave the money for a clock
tower as a memorial to ‘Jock’ McLean, his uncle and benefactor.
In youth, W. F. M. Buckley was one of the best polo players in New Zealand. He took
a B. A. degree at Christchurch College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar but did not
practice. Instead he farmed at Dunsandel, specialising in wheat-growing and the
breeding of draught horses, harness horses and polo ponies. His animals ‘had the
reputation of being some of the best raised in the Dominion’.
Buckley was president of the Ellesmere A. and P. Association, a member of the
General Committee of the Canterbury A. and P. Association and, from 1901-08 and
1915-19, a member of the Board of Governors of the Canterbury Agricultural College
at Lincoln (now Lincoln University).
Buckley married Jessie Rose Roberts who predeceased him. Jessie was a ‘sister of
Mr. A. F. Roberts, the owner of the well-known stallion, ‘Nightraid’. In his last years
Buckley suffered ill-health; finally he was bed-ridden.
The gravestone has the wording: William Frederick McLean Buckley, 1861-1930
Woolston / Heathcote Cemetery
2006
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