In December 1887, the House of Representatives voted to reduce its membership from general electorates from 91 to 70.
A small area of land around Lake Ellesmere also belonged to the electorate, and this now included Kaitorete Spit.
Boundary changes were again minimal, with the electorate regaining the southern settlements along Lyttelton Harbour.
The neighbouring Courtenay electorate was abolished and replaced with Riccarton, with Ellesmere's boundary shifting north-west to the South Island Main Trunk Railway, and the town of Lincoln was gained.
Three quarters of Banks Peninsula, including the town of Akaroa, were now covered by the Lyttelton electorate.
This brought many small communities on the Canterbury Plains into the electorate, including Springfield, plus settlement in the Southern Alps like Arthur's Pass and Cass.
In its final shape, the inland part of the electorate was centred on the Rakaia River.
[18] These were to be Hall's final three years in Parliament before he retired, during which he achieved his "last political triumph" of successful parliamentary leadership of the women's suffrage campaign.
[22] In 1896, Montgomery was challenged by Frederick Arthur Anson, a sheep farmer from Peraki standing for the opposition.
[23] Montgomery was defeated in the 1899 election by the exceptionally wealthy former lawyer and now farmer Heaton Rhodes, who was living in his 40-room mansion Otahuna on Banks Peninsula.
Rhodes, a conservative politician who joined the Reform Party, was to hold the electorate until 1925, when he retired on medical advice, only to be promptly appointed to the Legislative Council.