Gover Street

When the surveyor Frederic Carrington drew the first map of New Plymouth he named most of the streets after the directors and supporters of the Plymouth Company. Gover Street was named after the Gover family of London, a tribute to these enthusiastic investors in the new settlement.

Leading the charge to buy land in the Plymouth Company venture was William Glegg Gover, described as a ‘gentleman’ of Chester Square, Middlesex in the 1851 English Census. William also encouraged family members to take a punt on New Plymouth. He is recorded as owning 46 town sections, with other family members purchasing a further 21 sections.

The entrepreneurial Gover was also involved with a company tendering for the right to provide the lighting for the city of Rio de Janeiro and his name appears as a director of a land settlement enterprise in South Australia.

One hopes these ventures were more successful than his New Plymouth gamble. In 1852 an advertisement appeared in the Taranaki Herald signed by the family’s agent, A.H. Gaine, asking for those persons occupying sections owned by the Gover family to “pay all rents due”. Whether or not they received their money we do not know, but it seems unlikely as all family members appeared in the same newspaper only three years later, listed as owing rates to the Taranaki Provincial Council. 

William Gover died in 1855 and the Taranaki Land Deed Indexes held at Archives New Zealand reveal that by 1863 every single one of his sections had new owners. The Gover family’s purchase of land in the settlement is likely to have been purely speculative. They probably had no intention of ever coming to New Zealand, and would have bought the sections in the hope of making a substantial profit by selling the land later on if the Plymouth Company’s ambitious plans proved successful.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.

Related documents:

Taranaki Land Deed Index I3 pages 155 & 156 (Town Section 7 & 8)

Deeds of Grant for New Plymouth Land for collection (Taranaki Herald 10 October 1855)

Inquest re Escheat of Land (re Maria Gover), (Taranaki Herald 12 February 1880)