The Clements Hotel

The Clements Hotel occupies the building Cambridge has known as the Masonic Hotel for more than a century. It took its first guests on 5 August 2025, after an opening first planned for early 2025, and Tourism Minister Louise Upston cut the ribbon in November. The stable suites and the basement bar were scheduled for late October 2025. Gerry Westenberg and Jo Pannell own it. Capstone Hotel Management, a New Zealand company founded by Clare Davies, runs it.

The place

The hotel stands at 68 Duke Street, in the middle of Cambridge, a town of about 22,700 people on the Waikato River. Hamilton is 23 km away (about 26 minutes by road, according to the regional tourism board), Hamilton International Airport is roughly 15 minutes from the door, and Auckland International Airport is about an hour and a half.

Cambridge calls itself the town of trees and champions, and thoroughbred stud farms surround it. The building has its own place in that story. Through the twentieth century the Masonic served as a meeting point for the local equine community, hosting the Cambridge Hunt Club's breakfasts, and the Cornaga family who owned it helped found the Cambridge Trotting Club.

The concept

Archibald Clements, an Irish-born draper, built the first Masonic Hotel on Duke Street in 1866, on a one-acre site. The Cambridge Museum describes it as the town's first commercial building. By 1882 it had 40 bedrooms, a billiard room and a two-storey verandah, and it hosted the town's first Masonic Lodge for two years. Clements went on to serve as mayor in 1888 and sold up in 1900.

On 13 November 1911 a spark from a faulty chimney burned the hotel down in about half an hour. The owner, Victor Cornaga, hired the Auckland architect John Currie, and the brick replacement, influenced by French Beaux Arts and Edwardian commercial classicism, opened seven months later. That is the building visitors see today. It later declined, and Gerry Westenberg and Jo Pannell bought the run-down hotel in 2015. The restoration itself took about three and a half years.

The finished hotel has 29 rooms and suites, two of them accessible. Restored Edwardian rooms with high ceilings sit alongside newer rooms on an attic level, and the stained-glass windows, red brick walls and wooden staircase were kept. The Clements Suite, the top category, has a freestanding bath, a walk-in shower and a 30 sqm terrace. Three interlinked suites occupy the former horse stables, and the Corner Suite among them has a gas fireplace and a private courtyard. Bathrooms elsewhere are described as spacious, with marble floors. The hotel says the redesign took London's Claridge's as its inspiration. Its interior designer has not been publicly named.

Dining & wellness

The Gallery Restaurant looks onto the gardens and terrace and serves food the hotel describes as global in inspiration and local in produce. No chef has been named. The Clements Café & Wine Bar covers coffee and pastries in the morning and aperitivos in the evening.

The bar called 1866 occupies the original basement, which also holds a buried well. The local paper says it was inspired by Chicago speakeasies, and it has a stage for live music and a craft cocktail list. The Cambridge Distillery Co. makes a gin for the hotel from an Irish recipe of the 1860s that it rediscovered.

For events there is the Frances Rose conference room (36 people), a boardroom for 10, a 100 sqm lawn and several indoor rooms. No spa or pool has been announced.