The precise location of the original Witwatersrand Agricultural Society show grounds has long been obscured by the later history of Milner Park and the Rand Easter Show. Yet a close reading of early maps, ridge topography and contemporary descriptions suggests that the first permanent show grounds occupied a broader and rather different landscape from the later twentieth-century exhibition complex.
The Witwatersrand Agricultural Society was founded in 1894. Its first exhibition was held at the Wanderers grounds, but the Society soon obtained government land on the Braamfontein ridge for a more permanent agricultural showground. The most revealing contemporary description comes from Thelma Gutsche, who wrote that the Society was granted permission to hold its first shows on government land: “behind the kopjes to the west of the Gaol and extending under the Braamfontein ridge toward the Auckland Park area.”
She further described the site as:
- steep and rocky at the top
- but level enough in places for riding rings, cattle pens and temporary buildings
- and later noted that the College of Education erected lecture rooms upon part of the land.
These observations provide crucial clues.
A more detailed 1897 B. Melvill map from the “Wits Wired Space “ collection refines this picture further. The map shows the “Agricultural Show Ground” extending in a broad east–west strip below the Braamfontein ridge and just beyond the “Sanitary Board Jurisdiction Boundary” — a peri-urban zone beyond the densely settled mining town but still close to the railway and Braamfontein station.
This positioning is extremely important. The maps demonstrate that the pre-Boer War show grounds occupied land east of the later formal Milner Park exhibition estate.
Comparison with modern aerial imagery suggests a striking overlap between the nineteenth-century showground and the present educational precinct bounded by Empire Road, Jan Smuts Avenue and Melle Street, today occupied largely by Helpmekaar Kollege and neighbouring school properties.
The surviving topography still reflects Gutsche’s description. The land falls away southwards from the Braamfontein ridge in a series of terraces and rocky shelves — terrain suitable for temporary exhibition structures and livestock enclosures. The modern school sports fields preserve something of the openness of the earlier landscape.
A 1902 farm map of Braamfontein 142 strengthens this interpretation. The contour lines reveal broken ridges, shallow valleys and uneven ground north-west of Johannesburg and above the railway line. The area was still only lightly urbanised and would have provided an ideal transitional zone between town and countryside for agricultural exhibitions.
The original grounds of the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society also assumed an unexpected humanitarian role in the aftermath of the catastrophic Braamfontein Dynamite Explosion of 19 February 1896. As thousands of residents from nearby working-class neighbourhoods were left homeless by the blast, emergency refugee accommodation was established on the Society’s showgrounds in Braamfontein. Temporary shelters were erected to house displaced families while food, medical aid and relief services were organised through a remarkable civic effort. For a brief but critical period, the Agricultural Society grounds became a place of refuge and recovery at the centre of one of Johannesburg’s earliest urban disasters.
A later Braamfontein map, probably dating from the late 1920s, helps clarify the subsequent evolution of the district. By this stage:
- Wits University
- The formal “Show Ground"
- The Milner Park complex
were clearly situated west of Jan Smuts Avenue (formerly Old Pretoria Road). This suggests that after the South African War the formal Rand Show grounds expanded westward into what became Milner Park, while the earlier eastern ridge lands increasingly developed into educational precincts.
This distinction is important because later histories often conflate the original Agricultural Society grounds with the later Milner Park exhibition site.
The evidence instead points toward a sequence of development.
- Early Agricultural Reserve (1894–1899) - Government reserve land on the southern slopes of the Braamfontein ridge was used for the first permanent Witwatersrand Agricultural Society exhibitions.
- Milner Park Expansion (after 1903) - The Rand Show developed westward onto the larger and more formal Milner Park exhibition grounds.
- Educational Institutionalization (1920s onward)
The eastern ridge lands became occupied by:
- Helpmekaar,
- Educational institutions
- The Teachers’ Training College
- Later university expansion.
An intriguing subsidiary question concerns the origin of Empire Road itself. Anna Smith records that Empire Road was extended by Proclamation 77 in November 1925. The timing coincides remarkably closely with the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley (1924–25), raising the possibility that the road name commemorated that imperial event during a period of major institutional and educational planning on the Braamfontein ridge.
Hence the cartographic evidence strongly suggests that the original Witwatersrand Agricultural Society show grounds occupied a ridge landscape now largely hidden beneath Johannesburg’s educational institutions. The open government reserve of the 1890s has disappeared beneath roads, schools and university buildings, yet traces of the earlier terrain and land use remain visible in the contours of Braamfontein itself.
Kathy Munro is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. She enjoyed a long career as an academic and in management at Wits University. She trained as an economic historian. She is an enthusiastic book person and has built her own somewhat eclectic book collection over 40 years. Her interests cover Africana, Johannesburg history, history, art history, travel, business and banking histories. She researches and writes on historical architecture and heritage matters. She is a member of the Board of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation and is a docent at the Wits Arts Museum. She is currently working on a couple of projects on Johannesburg architects and is researching South African architects, war cemeteries and memorials. Kathy is a member of the online book community the Library thing and recommends this cataloging website and worldwide network as a book lover's haven. She is also a previous Chairperson of HASA.
References
- Gutsche, Thelma. A Very Smart Medal: The Story of the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Agricultural Society, 1970.
- Holmden. Map of Johannesburg. c.1929. Author’s collection.
- Melvill, B. Plan of Johannesburg. 1897. Wits University Wired Space
- Munro, Kathy. “Unanswered Questions 120 Years after the Great Braamfontein Dynamite Explosion.” The Heritage Portal, 26 February 2016.
- Smith, Anna H. Johannesburg Street Names: A Dictionary of Street, Suburb and Other Place-Names Compiled to the End of 1968. Cape Town: Juta, 1971.
- Stals, E. L. P. (red.). Afrikaners in die Goudstad. Cape Town and Johannesburg: Tafelberg, 1978.
- Van Onselen, Charles. New Babylon New Nineveh: Everyday Life on the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2001.
Maps Consulted
- 1902 farm map of Braamfontein 142.
- B. Melvill map of Johannesburg, 1897.
- Holmden’s map of Johannesburg, c.1929.
- Contemporary aerial imagery of the Braamfontein ridge and the Helpmekaar precinct.
The interpretation advanced in this article is based upon comparative analysis of historical cartography, ridge topography, municipal development patterns and contemporary descriptions of the early Witwatersrand Agricultural Society grounds.
