Grand Mansions

Having read recently some books about 'old Parktown, I am prompted to set down some further impressions and emotions about my five year tenure in that miracle of a suburb, in five different houses. At the time this was predicated by the need for a cheap home for myself, lover and infant son along with a changing circle of friends and a desire for a large house that allowed me to operate a photographic, art studio and darkroom. The fact that Parktown was within walking distance from the city centre and a stone’s throw from shops in Hillbrow made it an ideal choice for impoverished pedestrians and artists keen to borrow some faded grandeur.

My occupancy, initially, of part of a nameless and bland mansion at 5 St David's Place was brief. The house, impressively large, was fronted by a splendid wall and faced directly east, looking out over Parktown's famous oval, then in 1968 more a meadow than a cricket ground.

5 St David's Place

I then found rooms at 'Friedaura', a far larger and perhaps odder mansion situated on the corner of Victoria and St Andrews. It's chief glory was its gates, elaborate wrought and cast iron in flagrant Art Nouveau. These were hung on equally impressive stone gate posts topped with large stone balls, or they...

Huntington Hall, a mansion of profound historical significance in the village of Sabie, was tragically destroyed in a fire on the night of 28th August 2024.

The town of Sabie was started after H.T. Glynn and J.C. Ingle found gold there and formed the Glynns-Lydenburg Gold Mining Company. Huntington Hall, the manor house, used to belong to the owner of the old Glynn’s Lydenburg Gold Mine, H.T. Glynn. The town of Sabie was originally developed around this mine. The colonial structure was constructed in the late 1900s. The history of the house and its people were pivotal to the development of the region.

Huntington Hall before its falling into disrepair and being neglected by its local municipality and community

Below are some excerpts from the book: ‘Game and Gold - Memories of over 50 Years in the Lydenburg District, Transvaal’ by Henry T. Glynn

After the Anglo-Boer War, Lord Milner visited Pilgrims Rest and Sabie; he rode on horseback to Nelspruit from Pilgrims Rest and had relays. He called on us and had lunch at Huntington, with his escort of Colonels. While here my wife mentioned to him that it would be a great boon to the fields if a bridge could be thrown across the Crocodile River at Nelspruit, as the station...

These impressive gates, a survival from old Parktown, are to be seen at Helpmekaar Girls High or as it is now called, Rand Girls High School, at corner of Empire Road and Melle Street Parktown. The gates were once the pride of the Parktown house Friedaura, one of the original grand Parktown mansions but sadly demolished in the late 1960s. The gates are all that remains.

The mansion was an extraordinary confection; the style was Art Nouveau. The architecture brought the latest fashionable European turn of the century style to Johannesburg, the young town on the Highveld. The architects, clearly entranced by the curvilinear flourishes in flowers and tendrils, were Hermann Kallenbach and his partner of the time, Arthur Reynolds. The date was circa 1903/04 (the date on the porte cochère was 1904).

East Elevation of Friedaura

The suburb of Parktown was established in the 1890s by the Braamfontein Company, an offshoot of the H Eckstein group of companies  (familiarly known as Corner House). The style of architecture was fluid and eclectic – with an emphasis on grand reception rooms, entertainment and garden follies. They were the homes of the men who had made their fortunes in the new gold mining town – in mining or banking, merchandising or the professions. Herbert Baker came to the Transvaal with a brief from...

In late 1971, Robbie Hinds gave up his lease on 5 St David's Place Parktown. His commercial film company had not been a success so I, as his Assistant, Art Director, Driver, Stills Photographer and Caretaker was faced with finding a new home for my myself, my wife and infant son. Another 'orphan of this storm' was Gordon le Sueur who had a room in the annex behind 5 St David's (previously a boarding house). My great friend Arthur Cantrell came to our rescue. He was an old friend of Geoff Maitland, a distinctly eccentric Englishman, who had been renting No 12 Queens Road or 'Wynnstay' but was vacating soon. I hurried up the hill to speak to Geoff Maitland about taking over his lease.

Wynnstay was designed in 1913 by the architect Percival Hill Mitchelson (The Heritage Portal)

Geoff Maitland had been eking out an existence as an aerial photographer, perhaps something he had done in the war, when he probably met Arthur Cantrell. He proudly showed me his darkroom in a converted pantry off the passage to the kitchen. It was rather makeshift and I noticed there were no safelights rigged above his developing trays. Apparently Geoff was in ignorance of safelights and had been processing his prints purely by guesswork in total darkness! I'm sure he had other harmless...

A few months ago I was taking a group on a tour of the Randlords and their homes, and we were standing outside Sir Herbert Baker's lovely Stonehouse in Parktown, when the owner, Colin Barrow, walked up to the gate with an enormous smile. I nearly did a cartwheel when he said: "Would you like to come in?" After all, it's not every idle Tuesday morning that the owner of a historic home invites a bunch of strangers to walk through his home. It was a delightful tour within a tour.

Stonehouse (The Heritage Portal)

Built in 1902, the house literally grows out of the stone koppie, up two finely crafted stone storeys, and is testament to Baker’s simple but homely taste. It’s built on his trademark H-plan, with a central atrium, and two wings on either side. It’s an example of the Arts and Crafts back-to-nature style, and could fit easily in the English countryside. Baker trained stonemasons on site, and used Cape Town metalworker George Bess to fashion the lovely brass door handles and knockers, chandeliers and light switches. 

It has seven colourful tile and wood fireplaces, often with a moulded motif or ornamental alcoves above them, vaulted ceilings, wooden floors and leaded windows, tall, elegant chimneys, and a shingle roof. It is an elegant and comfortable home, with a lush...

Shortly after David Lloyd George became the UK’s Prime Minister in December 1916, Arthur Lee (1868 – 1947 and later Lord Lee) and his wife Ruth, an American heiress, decided on a most altruistic and public-spirited gesture. While previous Prime Ministers had always belonged to the landed classes, the post war era was clearly ushering in a new breed of politician. These men did not have the spacious country houses in which to entertain foreign dignitaries, or a tranquil place to relax from the affairs of state. After discussions with Lloyd George, the childless Lees donated their country home and estate, sections of which date to 1556, to the nation as a country retreat for the serving Prime Minister, under the Chequers Estate Act 1917.

Chequers from above

Sir Frank Reynolds follows suit with Botha House

In early 1918, South Africa’s Prime Minister, General Louis Botha (1862 - 1919) visited Sir Frank Reynold (1852 – 1930), a sugar magnate living at Lynton Hall on the southern outskirts of the little seaside village of Pennington. At some point Botha requested Reynolds to secure him some land in the vicinity, where he could erect a beach cottage for his wife Annie.

Inspired by Lord Arthur and Lady Ruth Lee’s gift to the British nation, Sir...

Set in a gently wooded area amid carefully tended gardens, it is difficult to believe that Franz Hoenig Haus is situated within a stone’s throw of a major chemical manufacturing complex and what was the largest Dynamite factory in the world.

The peace, tranquillity and ‘olde worlde’ atmosphere of the surroundings and of the house itself transport the visitor into time gone by. To an age of quiet, sophisticated refinement, of gracious ladies and distinguished gentlemen, of faultless cuisine and superior wines, of animated conversation and spirited repartee.

One of the oldest restored houses in Gauteng, it appears today very much as it did when built by European craftsmen as a residence for Franz Hoenig, Modderfontein Factory’s original Manager, in 1896.

An early photo of Franz Hoenig House

A more recent shot of the house (Robbie Vermont)

Both its name and style of architecture give the clue to the building’s Germanic origins, and no wonder: Franz Hoenig was Austrian and the builders, masons and carpenters who constructed the house were recruited in Germany.

Not three years after the construction of the house was complete, the war clouds gathered and in...

I was recently invited on a site visit to The Kagye Samye Dzong, Tibetan Buddhist Monastery and Centre in Kensington. It is a remarkable and little known heritage house in this suburb. The objective of the visit was to enable members of the  Johannesburg East Joint Plans Committee of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, together with members of the Kensington Residents Association to meet the distinguished Abbot Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche (the Chairman of the Ropka Trust and Buddhist monk) and his board and colleagues together with the architect Simi Theodorou.

Isabella Pingle, a unique estate agent in Kensington, brings groups together that are unlikely to connect in other ways. She is a Trustee of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation and she promotes and celebrates the heritage of Kensington; she founded the Kensington Heritage Trust which works closely with the Kensington Residents Association. Isabella has convened this gathering; we are all masked and observing Covid conventions but it is a delight to be out and meeting  heritage enthusiasts on a sunny July Saturday. The address is 34 Floss street, stands 7641 and 7642. It is a stone’s throw away from Roberts Avenue and Jeppe Boys School but it is a secluded, hard to find place as Floss Street turns a corner and runs to a dead end. The gates to the centre open off a cul-de-sac end of Floss and Good Hope Streets; a dozen cars already spill out of the small car parks in front and behind the house.

Ropka was founded in Tibet and is an international relief organization...

The American Government was assembling a site in Arcadia, Pretoria. They wanted the entire suburban block so they could build the largest embassy in Africa. One property stood between them and the full realisation of their plan, an old home called Arkleton belonging to Dr van Bergen. The Americans appointed an independent valuer to determine the market value of the property. Using all the correct procedures to determine the most probable market value, a valuation of R2 million was established and an attractive cash offer with no suspensive conditions was presented to Dr van Bergen. His first question was: “What do you want to do with my home?” “We want to demolish it,” was the reply. “Never!” exclaimed the doctor, “not for as long as I live.”

When I called on him a few weeks later to enquire if he would consider selling his home, he asked, “Are you here on behalf of the Americans?” I assured him I was not. He told me he was considering selling his home because he had sold his practice and retired. To discover why, then, he was so against selling to the Americans, I probed cautiously. What followed was a remarkable story of how a man feels about his home.

“My wife and I were building our dream home when an estate agent friend of ours told us a marvellous old home had just come onto the market,“ he said. “We explained we had started to build a home and were no longer...

You may have noticed a quaint stone wall with two decrepit wooden gates on Louis Botha Avenue between Acorn Lane and Death Bend. Or perhaps the row of magnificent plane trees just behind the wall caught your attention as you navigated this most notorious of Joburg roads. If you were brought to a stop in traffic, you may have even looked beyond the wall and the trees and seen an imposing double storey property in the distance, and wondered how it came to be built here.

Louis Botha Avenue entrance and stone wall (Brett McDougall)

This large property, consisting of ten Houghton erven (or part thereof), was consolidated by Mrs FM Bagley between 1922 and 1925, with the main dwelling being built during this time on erf 906.

No details of the original owner, Mrs Bagley, have been found, but the name appears against a number of Houghton properties in the valuation rolls of the 1920s and 30s, so it is possible that Bagley was a property speculator. The property was purchased by Mrs A Block in the late 1920s. Ann Block was born Ann Hillman, and she married Isidore Jack Block in 1924. The dashingly handsome Isidore Block was born in 1893, and educated at St John’s College, Houghton...