Clemow Road

Clemow Road applauds Robert Clemow and the respect he gained as one of Taranaki's farming stalwarts, following his arrival in New Plymouth in 1872.

Clemow set out to swap his life in Cornwall, England, where he was born in 1820, for that as the head of a farming family in New Plymouth and later Ōmata. With his wife, Mary, and 11 additional family members, including their seven children, five girls and two boys, the family disembarked the ship Caduceus in Auckland. Soon after, he came to New Plymouth and settled on a property in Fitzroy known as Upton. It was at the eastern end of the road that was then called the Devon Line.

Clemow obviously made an impression on the residents of Devon Line, who described him as a quiet, straightforward and a thoroughly good man. So much so that they went on to have the street renamed Clemow Road some time in the late 1870s.

Perhaps it was Clemow's reputation as a fine fruit and nut grower that encouraged his neighbours' fondness for him after he won first prize for the best walnuts in 1883 and best medlars in 1884, for both of which he was awarded five shillings. Or perhaps it was his inability to suffer fools, as demonstrated by a notice he had printed in the Taranaki Herald in 1873 asking the owner of a straying yearling heifer to collect their animal from his farm before he sold it to recoup the damage it had done.

With his children at his side, Robert Clemow died at his home in Fitzroy on December 22, 1891, aged 71. His wife, Mary Ivy, had died two years earlier at the age of 69. Robert Clemow is buried at the Te Hēnui cemetery in New Plymouth.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.