During the 1980s, the Pietermaritzburg Society was dedicated to the preservation of the city’s red brick Victorian architecture. The president was architect Gordon Small who had been commissioned by the Natal Provincial Hospital Services to advise on the restoration of some of the old buildings at Fort Napier, originally the headquarters of the British garrison in Natal, but then as now, being used as a mental health facility.
First and last structures of the fort: The turn of the 20th Century water tower built into the 1843 redoubt.
Gordon arrived at a society meeting sometime in 1987 marvelling at the wealth of heritage buildings and at the history of the old fort that lay cut off from the world by strong gates, tall trees, and the general inaccessibility of a mental health institution. Paul Thompson, a history professor at the University of Natal (who had trained at a military academy in the USA), jumped through several bureaucratic hoops, but received permission to do a survey of the surviving military buildings on the site.
There was some talk of turning some of the buildings into a museum, but this would have fallen foul of the Tri-Cameral Constitution beloved by “Die Groot Krokodil”, one PW Botha...
