Kathy Munro

Many readers will have heard of the discovery of the original Yeoville Water Tower blueprint earlier this year. This discovery sparked a research journey which has culminated in a wonderful series of articles by Kathy Munro (click here to view series index). Below is the first installment which covers the early water supply history of Johannesburg and the origins of the Water Tower. The piece was first published in the Sep / Oct 2018 issue of Architecture SA. Thank you to Paul Kotze for giving us permission to publish. The powerful main image (copyright Gail Wilson) shows the 1913 Yeoville Water Tower to the left, the 1937 concrete water tower in the centre and Westminster Mansions in the foreground. 

The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation awarded the Yeoville Water Tower of Johannesburg a Category A heritage protection listing in its grading exercise of 2013. Its origins have been shrouded in mystery. The Water Tower, assembled from precast steel pieces dates from 1913 and was designed by the German engineering firm Aug. Klönne, of Dortmund, in Germany.

Yeoville Water Tower from the Observatory Ridge (The Heritage Portal)

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September was Heritage Month but here I was in October invited to spend a weekend at Kedar Heritage Lodge to join the celebrations for the unveiling of a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill. Why October? Why Churchill in the Bushveld? Then I remembered. Kedar is a modern reincarnation of President Kruger’s farm and country estate, Boekenhoutfontein (meaning Beech-wood Spring). Now located in the Northwest Province, it was once a jewel in the Transvaal Republic. The 10th October was President Kruger’s birthday (his dates 1825-1904) and if you were a child during the fifties, it was a date that was writ large in school history of that era. We used to celebrate Kruger Day as a public holiday. Today 10th October is just an average working day. It was one of those holidays that was dispensed with when South Africa transitioned to a democracy for all. Saturday 13th October was the nearest weekend to that now forgotten 10th October. The Kruger Farm has become Kedar Heritage Lodge and is part of the Recreation Africa group of hotels and restaurants owned by Robert Forsyth. This company began purchasing farmland in the area including the portion owned by Kruger’s daughter Gezina. Purchases continued and today the Hotel group owns some 1 200 acres.

Kgosikgolo Lentswe - c1857-1924. The...

I think Heritage Portal readers will be interested in my archival sleuthing. I have found the blueprint of the original plan for the Parktown home Gordon Leith designed in 1927. Then called Morgenzon for the Coddingtons and built in 3rd Avenue Parktown, Johannesburg. The name changed to Le Tholonet and the house became the home of Clive and Irene Mennell after World War II. It was with great sadness that we reported the loss of this fine heritage home to fire in July 2018 (click here to view report).

The remains of Le Tholonet (Kathy Munro)

The plan I have located is an old blueprint and is important as it proves that this was a Gordon Leith design. Close study of the plans shows elevations and sections, materials to be used, what the original home would look like and all the technical details relating to vents, waste water, chimney and flue etc. There were later alterations but the house remained essentially true to the ideas of Leith.

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A few weeks ago I was privileged to be invited by Clive Chipkin to join his Joburg tour for a group of visiting American students from Brown University, USA. The group of 22 postgraduate students spent a week in Johannesburg at the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) in Parktown. Hats off to Brown for devising a study abroad programme on the complexities of South Africa beyond 1994 and its transition to democracy.

Clive Chipkin devised a personal tour to place Johannesburg in the context of its natural topography, the Witwatersrand. His tour reached across the grandest of hill top sites of the Witwatersrand. Evidence of Clive’s macro thinking has already been presented on the Heritage Portal in his 2015 heritage survey of the Corridors of Freedom, prepared for the City of Johannesburg (click here to view). Clive expresses conceptual thinking in visual diagrams about place and space. He seeks viable architectural solutions for future settlement patterns in the city. For this special Brown student tour Clive drew two maps. The first map set out our specific route with the starting point as the Gauteng Legislature (of course we still call it the Johannesburg City Hall) and ended at the Cottesloe hill. The route allowed for four stopping points on the high points of Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand ridges. The second map places Johannesburg in a geographical context relating Witwatersrand hills ridges and rivers within Gauteng.

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Thirty Three Nostalgic Coloured and Monochrome Postcards - Johannesburg. (Edwardian). Published: Braune & Levy, Printers & Engravers, Johannesburg, Circa 1904-8. One postcard was used with postmark and stamp. The remaining 32 were unused and have been removed from an old album and carry slight paste marks to blank side. All postcards printed by Braune & Levy, Johannesburg. Thankfully photographed for an auction on Antiquarian Auctions.

Click here for some background on this collection and postcard history in general.

1 - Jeppestown - Park with Jeppe's Monument. No.1001. Coloured

2 - Jeppestown - Park. No. 1005. Coloured.

3 - Jeppestown - Marshall Street. No. 786. Coloured.

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I recently came across a remarkable set of 33 period coloured and monochrome postcards of Johannesburg (click here to view). The postcards date from somewhere between 1904 and 1908. They are photographic images and show street and architectural views of Johannesburg in the Edwardian period. They were published and printed by a company called Braune and Levy of Johannesburg. 32 of these postcards (of the 33) were saved as unused blanks and just one had been used and had a postmark and a stamp. The postcards must have been removed from an old album. This set was sold in an online auction (Antiquarian auctions) in July 2016 and the hammer price was $100. I would assess that price as a fair market price as early postcards of Johannesburg sell for between  R50 and R100 a card. I wish I had been alert and had put in a bid in 2016 but this is “one of those ones that got away”. However, we are fortunate indeed that Antiquarian Auctions placed images of all the postcards online as part of their catalogue and I have simply consolidated in this article that which can be extracted and saved.

Of course it is likely that at least some of these postcards would have been in Oscar Norwich’s much sought after 1986 book A Johannesburg Album. Historical Postcards (published by AD Donker, 1986). Norwich had the most wonderful collection of postcards and his focus was on the postcard in relation to Johannesburg history. Deltiology (or...

This small handbook was literally a pocket filler. It was an annual Johannesburg City publication Vade-Mecum. The meaning of the word, Vade-Mecum, is the Latin expression "go with me". It is a small slender volume issued by the City Treasurer's Department and by 1949 was in its 19th edition. What a contrast to current glossy city reports and promotional books. I recently received a 156 page document with the glamour and glitz of promotional advertising, all the emphasis on colour and layout, all with the objective of marketing city properties for long term lease. In 1949 this little book was a no nonsense factual approach for the citizens and ratepayers of Johannesburg, to provide all the necessary information about the city's affairs and its finances. It's a concise ready reference about the activities of the City Council.

Book Cover

In 1949 the city treasurer was Dr I Q Holmes who managed a capital outlay of £52 million in a year when the population was estimated at 839 154. This little guide starts with the Abattoir and the Live stock Market and ends with the Zoological Gardens and covers almost everything the city was responsible for from A to Z. Did you know that in 1949 there were an estimated 2 664 animals and...

Fire is the most destructive and frightening of all elements. A Johannesburg heritage home in Parktown, Le Tholonet, at 6 3rd Avenue, was lost to fire on 17th July 2018. On Wednesday this week Clive Chipkin and I embarked on an expedition to discover and if possible photograph Parktown and Saxonwold homes of a certain period. We were in search of the Cape Dutch architectural style and its variants in the old elite northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

In the case of Le Tholonet (definitely in Cape Dutch style) we particularly wished to pin down and discuss the glorious central gable of the heritage  home with its first floor lovers balcony, bedrooms at first floor level tucked under thatched eaves and the distinctive chimneys. Imagine our surprise and dismay to discover that the house has been lost to fire. The gates were ajar and it took us a moment or two to realize that all was not right. Only a shell of isolated walls remains. We were confronted by a scene of blackened destruction: burnt remains, blackened walls and collapsed floorboards. The security man on duty (once we had introduced ourselves and presented our credentials) told us that a massive fire had destroyed almost all of this beautiful home. His account was that there had been an electrical fault and with a thatch roof there was little hope of saving the home. On Wednesday, workmen were everywhere removing the debris, the charred remains and fractured black timbers. Twisted metal lay everywhere. Heaps of scrap, burnt out timber, iron, remains of ceiling boards and wooden library shelves piled up on the front lawn.

The home has a listing on the...

Clarendon Circle was a landmark intersection of the north east route into Johannesburg. It was a circle of note located where East Avenue crossed Empire, Bruce, Twist and Klein Streets. There was an island on East Avenue separating the traffic lanes with an attractive line up of palm trees and shrubs.

Today Clarendon Circle is no more and the fingerprint of the history is captured in the name Clarendon Place which was the new name for East Avenue. The old Clarendon Circle disappeared into an amorphous, chaotic crossing marked by what we call robots and others around the world call traffic lights. This article explores the history of place and location.

Location of Clarendon Circle (A mid 1950s tourist map of Johannesburg)

Clarendon Circle was named in honour of the Earl of Clarendon, George Villiers (1877-1955) who served as Governor General of the Union of South Africa from 1931 to 1937. He was the chief representative of Britain in South Africa. George Villiers came from an aristocratic English family with ancient roots. His full name was George Herbert Hyde Villiers, 6th Earl of Clarendon. He was a British Conservative politician and sat in the House of Lords. He also served as Chief Scout of the Boy Scout movement during his tenure as Governor General and filled many other...

On 26 July 2018 concerned stakeholders including representatives from the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (Kathy Munro), the Kensington Residents Association (Isabella Pingle) and the  Johannesburg East Joint Plans committee (Andre Marais) met with Eric Itzkin, Zoleka Ntobeni, Councillor Carlos Da Rocha and Cebo Mhlongo of the City. We paid a site visit to the Bez Valley War Memorial. This is the First World War War memorial commemorating the 64 men of Bezuidenhout Valley who lost their lives while fighting or serving on battlefields and theatres of war in France, South West Africa, East Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. They were soldier volunteers for the British Empire and Allied cause in the war against Germany and the Central powers between 1914 and 1918. The first name on the central panel of names on the granite plinth was Sir George Farrar of Bedford Court who died following a tragic railway accident in the South West African campaign.

Painting of Bedford Court

The men commemorated on the memorial were all white and many of immigrant descent or first generation South Africans. Those were the racial, cultural and social restrictions of that era. Black members of the SA Native Labour Corp who were also volunteers and service men are now remembered and commemorated at various memorials across the city and all who served are remembered at the Cenotaph on Beyers Naude Square. The...