I recently read an article by Professor Kathy Munro about Clarendon Circle, East Avenue and Clarendon Place in Hillbrow, Johannesburg (click here to read). Readers may be interested to know how the name of Clarendon Place came about.
In 1959 the City of Johannesburg had taken a decision to remove Clarendon Circle, and replace it with robots. East Avenue, which then ran around the Circle, was a major road connecting the end of Louis Botha Avenue and on into the city, from Pretoria. There were no freeways at that time.
Before and after shots (sourced by Marc Latilla)
The government had during that period been intent on changing anything English-sounding – FC Erasmus the Minister of Defence had been embarking on names of military units and rank structures, so it appeared to an organisation I belonged to at the time, UNESSA (United English-speaking South Africans), that the government would be quite happy to see the name of a previous Governor-General, the Earl of Clarendon, disappear from Johannesburg.
George...
