Birch Hill Cemetery Memorial

Now a public cemetery, Birch Hill Cemetery was once a private cemetery for the use of the family, friends and workers of Birch Hill Station, and remains a small cemetery tucked away in the hills off Birch Hill Road near Oxford.

Edward Bowler Millton, and his wife Maude (née Ford) had the current Birch Hill Station homestead built to a design by Samuel Hurst Seager, one of New Zealand’s leading designers of large houses, after the original house owned by his father, sea captain William Newton Millton, burnt down. Edward’s brother, J D Millton, also inherited land, on the Ashley Flats, and named the property ‘Rakahuri’.

In 1930, Edward Millton (now Lieutenant-Colonel), decided to honour the men and horses who had served in the Great War by commissioning and constructing a stone monument in the Birch Hill Cemetery. Many of the 8th Regiment‘s (New Zealand Mounted Rifles) horses came from Birch Hill.