George Beetham

George Beetham, F.R.G.S., M.H.R. (1840 – 20 August 1915), known to Māori as Hori Pitama, was a New Zealand politician and alpinist.

Beetham was born in 1840 in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England. His father was the noted portrait painter William Beetham. The Beetham family emigrated to New Zealand in 1855, arriving on the William and Jane in 1855. Together with his brothers, he settled in the Wairarapa. The brothers built up a farm on land bought by his father, and Brancepeth Station was by 1901 the largest land holding in the Wairarapa, at 24,000 hectares (240 km²). As the land had originally been owned by Māori, Beetham engaged with them frequently and they knew him as Hori Pitama. His sister Susannah married Cecil Fitzroy in 1878.

Beetham made his first exploration of Mount Ruapehu in March 1878. In 1879, Beetham, accompanied by Joseph Prime Maxwell, a civil engineer of Wellington, made a complete ascent of Mount Ruapehu, and, reaching its summit, crossed the large southern glacier, and made a close examination of the hot lake that is in the great ice plateau, the existence of which had not been previously recorded.

Beetham

Coordinates: 54°12′29″N 2°46′30″W / 54.208°N 2.775°W / 54.208; -2.775

Beetham is a village and civil parish in Cumbria, England, situated on the border with Lancashire. It is part of the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

History

Craven in the Domesday Book shows that up till 1066 Earl Tostig was lord of Beetham and the surrounding areas of Farleton, Preston Richard, Hincaster, Heversham and Levens in Cumbria plus Yealand Redmayne and Borwick in Lancashire. Beetham manor then amounted to 25 carucates (ca3000 acres/1250ha) of ploughland. The Norman conquest of England added it to the extensive lands of Roger de Poitou.

Demography

The parish had a population of 1,724 recorded in the 2001 census, increasing to 1,784 at the 2011 Census.

Community

Points of interest include:

Beetham (disambiguation)

Beetham may refer to:

Places

In England

In Trinidad and Tobago

People

See also