Rissington was the name Colonel George Whitmore gave to Pekapeka, the large sheep run he and his business partner, Captain John Carstairs McNeill acquired in Hawke’s Bay, in the 1860s. Whitmore and McNeill were on the staff of Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron who had been appointed to command the British forces in New Zealand. They arrived in Auckland in March 1861 and soon began buying land in Hawke’s Bay. Within a decade they controlled about 110,000 acres, much of it leasehold. Land that Whitmore boasted “stretched from the Kaweka range to the sea”. Access to Rissington, as they named their estate, was by boat from Ahuriri to Poraiti. Then on horseback or by bullock wagon to Puketapu. From there it was on a rough track beside the Tūtaekuri river to the junction of the Mangaone river, then up the Mangaone to Rissington, where Whitmore built his homestead. McNeill continued his career as a professional soldier and took no active part in running the station, although the tallest hill in the Rissington area is named Mount McNeill after him. To begin with McNeill’s cousin managed the property, bombarded with instructions from Whitmore in Auckland. In November 1862 Whitmore sold his commission in the army and moved to Rissington to take charge himself. He managed the estate with military precision, raising sheep and purebred shorthorn cattle. He also introduced rabbits, pheasants, and quail for game and a thousand gorse bushes to use as fences. He named it Rissington after Little Rissington, a village near his home in Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire in England. In 1866 Whitmore reverted to his military background and led the Napier militia against the Hauhau at Omarunui. When the New Zealand government appointed him to command the colonial forces, he considered it his duty to accept. Rissington was no longer his priority. In 1872 Whitmore leased 30,000 acres of his Patoka land to Robert Heaton Rhodes from Canterbury. The following year he sold the Apley portion of the farm. Finally in 1873, he sold the remaining land to the Canterbury syndicate - four businessmen who traded as Messrs Rhodes & Co. George Thomas Seale managed the Rhodes estate from 1873 to 1882 and reported back to his bosses in Christchurch. The newspapers were full of advertisements for shepherds (with dogs preferred), a steady man to drive a team of horses (must be accustomed to hill country), men to sow grass seed, plough, shear, cook and erect wire fences. In 1881 he advertised for 24 shearers to shear about 75,000 sheep. To oversee the vast acreage Seale and his family moved between houses in Patoka, Rissington and Woodthorpe. All this came to an end in 1881 with the death of one of the partners. Rhodes & Co gave instructions for the estate to be divided into blocks and sold. In 1882 Francis Hutchinson, who had arrived from Yorkshire with his wife Sarah and young family the year before, bought the homestead block. Until the First World War, Francis owned approximately 11,000 acres at Rissington, when land was subdivided for returned soldiers. Two of Francis and Sarah Hutchinson’s children lived in Rissington all their lives. Frank, their eldest son married Amy Large and in 1907, they moved across the river to live at Omatua. Francis’ youngest daughter Geraldine married JH (Jack) Absolom. Jack managed the station under the watchful eye of his father-in-law until Francis died in 1930. Jack continued to run the farm until his death in 1944. Today it is Geraldine and Jack’s great grandsons who run Rissington.