Helen Elizabeth (Nellie) Clemo 1918-2000

Helen Elizabeth (Nellie) Clemo 5-9-1919- 16-12-2000 Nellie was born in Bromley Kent to Richard James (Jim) and Rose Clemo. Jim was a despatch rider in the Army and was convalescing after his motorbike was hit by shrapnel. He received burns to his legs when the petrol tank exploded.

Jim returned to his unit and continued to serve in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Ireland before discharge in about 1922. They then moved to Devonport to live with his father Charles, an ex Royal Navy Petty Officer who had fought at the Battle of Jutland aboard HMS Lion in 1916. It had been almost the first great sea battle in over one hundred years, and the tactics adopted by Admiral Jellicoe were not far removed from the days of Trafalgar. The British fleet had major problems communicating with each other, and there were major tactical and operational errors that resulted in great loss of life. Three large warships were lost due to an elementary error of leaving the doors to the magazines open. One single salvo on target caused the battle cruisers Indefatigable and Queen Mary to blow up and later in the action HMS Invincible also blew up. Only an act of utmost bravery saved HMS Lion from a similar fate, when Major Francis Harvey, (no, not a Harvey from Hayle) although mortally wounded, ordered the flooding of one of the magazines, which had been set on fire following a direct hit on the ship’s Q turret. He died soon afterwards and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. That selfless action certainly saved my great grandfather’s life.

Charles wife Hettie erroneously received a telegram informing her of his death in battle. When this was followed by another letter telling her of the death of her eldest son Reginald Charles on August 14th 1917, it tipped her into insanity and she was sectioned and placed in the Asylum in Bodmin where she took her own life on 18th October 1917.
Charles mother Annie lived with the family in Devonport until her death in 1920, as did his brother in law Francis William Hayes, who worked in the dockyard and had lodged with his family. Francis died in 1930. Another brother in law Harry Vollmer Hayes also worked at the dockyard, so when Jim left the army he moved to Devonport with his wife and daughter and lodged with his father.
Life was hard in Devonport in the early 1920s. Jim managed to find work as a furniture van driver and as a chauffeur, but times were hard. Reginald Charles (Reg) Clemo was born on the 3rd September 1923, and his daughter Rose Davies recalls him speaking of being put into a home on more than one occasion because Jim and Rose could not feed him. Reg later vowed that his children would never be sent to bed hungry, as had happened to him on more than one occasion. Jim had a younger brother Leonard. He was born in 1908 and at the outbreak of war in 1914 he was sent to St Erth to live with his aunt Julia Hayes. In 1927 Leonard was married (for the first time) and the family posed for a photograph. Jim and Rose had a son called David who was stillborn in around 1925, followed by a son Richard James (Dick) in 1928 and another son Peter in 1932.

In 1934 Charles Clemo died in Plymouth Hospital. He was buried with his wife Hettie in St Erth cemetery. Jim and Rose must have made the decision to move to Cornwall soon afterwards because Jim used some of his inheritance to buy a Morris car which had two dickie seats in the boot. Nellie and Reg sat in the dickie seats and with Rose, the infant Peter and 6 year old Dick plus all their belongings inside the car drove down to St Erth and lodged with Aunt Julia. Nellie was now 15 and had left school, so a job was found for her as a telegram girl at the local Post Office, which was owned by Mr Trevaskis, a relative. (James Hayes married Betsy Trevaskis in 1822. Jim’s mother Hettie’s middle name was Trevaskis).
At around this time there was a row over Charles Clemo’s legacy. Jim believed that he had been cheated out of a significant sum of money by Leonard and they fell out, never to be reconciled.
After some months Jim and Rose found a cottage in Goldsithney and they lived there until Jim’s death in 1960 While living in Devonport Jim had had a dramatic conversion and was a member of the Plymouth Brethren Christian sect, and soon after moving to Goldsithney Jim called on the Vicar of St Hilary, Father Walker, (who had married Jim’s brother in 1927) and arranged for Nellie to work at the Vicarage as a scullery maid. However, Jim insisted that Nellie continue to live at home.
In around 1937 or so, Nellie had a sweetheart. He worked for Trinity House, who looked after the lighthouses and buoys that guarded the many rocks and reefs off the coast. When her mother Rose discovered that he had TB which was at that time incurable, she forbade Nellie from continuing the relationship. So Nellie married Albert Bond on the rebound.
Albert Bond was working as a lampman with a gang laying cables through Goldsithney. She would chat to him over the back gate and her father Jim did not approve. They married at Penzance Registry Office in 1937. Nellie was eighteen and needed her parent’s permission to wed. Even as they travelled from Goldsithney to Penzance for the ceremony, Jim begged her not to go ahead with the wedding but she was adamant she would marry.
Albert and Nellie Bond moved to the Scilly Isles when they were married. William was a labourer on a flower farm. Their first child William was conceived there but before he was born they moved back to the mainland, where they lived with Albert’s parents next to the old chapel in Kelynack, St Just. William Bond was born in 2 Church Square St Just in November 1939.
For the next few years Albert worked as a farm labourer throughout Penwith, and the family lived in tied cottages. Albert was blessed with charisma but at the same time was cursed with a devil may care attitude and a quick temper. Many’s the time he would walk out of a job without thinking about where his family would live and Nellie was more often than not penniless.
Stephen Bond was born in 1947 and Bernard Bond in 1949, but it was apparent even then that the marriage was failing. They lived in Boscrage in 1952 and Carnegwidden near Chysauster in 1956 in a house without electricity, drainage, running water or services of any kind. Water was obtained from a nearby stream, or if that ran dry in summer, it was a long walk to find another source.
Winter 1956 was spent in a cottage in Lesingey, just outside Penzance once again without running water or electricity. In May 1962 they moved to the old Army camp at Ponsondane where they lived in an old Army hut. In October they moved to a council house on the Gwavas estate in Newlyn.
By 1967 the marriage was over. Nellie was 48. Nellie went to live with Jack Matthews at 6 Little Trethewey Estate Porthcurno, later moving to St Erth.
She divorced Albert and married Jack. Stephen and Bernard stayed with Albert at Gwavas. In 1968 Stephen Bond married Mary Hayes and moved to Relubbus. They had three children.

Nellie Clemo was the black sheep of our family. She had a very hard life, was often penniless and had to live off her wits. She was rarely mentioned in our household and I never met her. I never met any of her family before 2011 when I met Bernard at Peter Clemo’s funeral.
Bernard Bond was estranged from his mother for 30 years until 1997 when he saw her at a Salvation Army lunch. He was persuaded to speak to her and they made peace. He discovered that Jack had died in about 1987 and that her brother Peter Clemo and their family had been keeping an eye on her.
Helen Elizabeth (Nellie) Matthews nee Clemo died in 2000 aged 81. She was buried with her parents in Perranuthenoe churchyard.

Parallel Lines

I've spent an age looking at various website pages checking out the Hayes family line. I managed to find a Hayes in a neighbouring parish of Uny Lelant in the late 1680s and through that link managed to find a host of Hayes births deaths and marriages. It seems that the Hayes family only ever called their sons William, James, Richard or John, so it's confusing to find so many James Hayes down the years, especially as we find that a James Hayes died in infancy and the parents went on to have another son and called him James as well! No sooner had I compiled a huge list of names and was beginning to tie the family tree together when I stumbled on this site!
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~peterscornishfamily/Hayes/Hayes-Family.htm

My good friend and fellow geneologist Peter had found a lot of what I'd discovered and set it out in table form as you can see. I contacted him and offered him the information I had found and he has been able to extend the Hayes family line and include the Clemo Family Tree as well.
Please check it out. I was staggered to see how many Cornish families we are related to by marriage.

Interesting link...

We've been away on holiday in Cornwall and visited a few relatives. One of my cousins told me something that set me off investigating as soon as I returned. People often ask me if I'm related to the blind Cornish poet Jack Clemo. I've always said no as he was from St Austell at the other end of the county. However, Rose told me that she was told by her father that Jack Clemo was our grandfather Jim's cousin, and that he came down to Goldsithney to visit on several occasions. This got me thinking and investigating. The first thing I was able to establish was that Jack's full name was Reginald John Clemo. He was born in 1916 and his father died at sea soon afterwards. This got me thinking. There are two Clemos on the Navy Memorial at Plymouth. One is grandfather Jim's older brother Reginald Charles, who went down with HMS Prize, and the other in Stoker Reginald Clemo who was on HMS Tornado when is was hit by a mine in 1917. Could this be Jack's father? If so, then we must work backwards to find the family link.

Trevithick Estate

We moved into this house in 1953. Both my sister Shirley and my brother Richard were born there. We moved to London in 1962.
Since then the house has undergone an upgrade. The windows have been replaced (the old ones were single glazed metal frames and were very draughty, and the building has been clad to improve the insulation.
I'm going down to Hayle soon. Should I knock on the door?

My early years

I was born in 1949 and my parents lived with my grandparents for the first few months of their marriage. However, I understand that my grandmother was not the easiest person to get along with, and so they moved into a bedsit in Penzance. I've tried to find it but the building must have long gone. Following that, they lived on Hayle Towans. Here's my Identity Card which I still have in my possession.

In yet another of those strange coincidences, this is about half a mile from Phillack Church, where my Great-great-grandfather and his wife are buried.

I have a few tiny photos of me as a child taken on the Towans. But where?

We stayed on the Towans when we holidayed in Cornwall last September. I made a point of looking for the location of the photographs. I soon found the chalet called "Lanteglos". It doesn't have a sea view and I'd have been too young to be the boy in the picture. I went looking for "Westover". I was told that the owners aren't allowed to change the names of the chalets but I saw little evidence to support that as I walked around the area. Most of the chalets have been uprated or rebuilt as bungalows but I eventually found myself on a part of the Towans that had the required views and buildings in the background. (I have about six photos and it's possible to line up the photos with the present day buildings and get the approximate location.)

This is the same view as the photo from 1952, with my son as subject

According to my ID card we moved into "Westover" in February 1951. We moved to Trevithick Estate in 1953 (I think) so I would be two or three when the photo was taken.

An update

The project has been on the back burner for a few months while I collect more information and order my thoughts. I can trace my family all the way from 1863 to the present day but I have a few gaps in the narrative. It doesn't help that almost all my aunts and uncles are deceased. I'm in contact with various cousins and I'm trying to patch together the story from the mid 1930s.
My family is typical of many. In a way there's nothing special about them. However there are the usual family arguments and divisions and I'm trying to piece a story out of the fragments that survive.

I've written about 20,000 words that take the story up to the end of the First World War. As I understand more about my family I will add to it.