In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reveals the rich history of Lonehill in Sandton. She also uncovers some wonderful details about the places, spaces and people of Sandton before it became the financial capital of South Africa. The piece first appeared on the City of Joburg's website on 25 February 2003. Click here to view more of Davie's work.
There’s a story that if the top boulder of the Lonehill Koppie were dislodged, all the whites in the country would leave. It’s a latter-day version of an Anglo Boer War tale: that if the Boers dislodged the rock, the British would lose the war and leave South Africa.
Whatever version you fancy, the top boulder, which balances on several larger boulders, is still firmly in place and although some whites have emigrated, most are just as firmly still in the country.
Ladder to the top (The Heritage Portal)
The Lonehill Koppie is beautiful – it stands out as a lone koppie in the middle of suburbia, some 28 kilometres north of the city centre, and is a reminder of what Johannesburg used to look like before it was settled: rocky veld with small streams trickling through it, dotted with shrubs, small trees and knee-high grasses. Guinea fowl...
Just a few hundred metres from the Sandton Gautrain Station is a little piece of history... the 'Little Church in the Pines', one of Sandton's oldest buildings. Below are a few passages outlining the Church's history taken from the 1992 Sandton Historical Association magazine. The author? None other than the legendary Juliet Marais Louw...
"The little church is still there in Stella Street, Sandown, its story begins with that colourful personality, Sytze Wierda who came from Friesland in Holland in 1887 to organise the Public Works Department for President Kruger. With Sytze Wierda came his wife, Hermina, and his four daughters, Nellie who was twenty at the time, Hendrika, fifteen, Anna, twelve and Suse, eight.
Mr Wierda was an architect who had designed the Central Railway Station in Amsterdam, among other work. For the Kruger government he planned the Raadzaal and the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, the Paardekraal Monument, Johannesburg's Rissik Street Post Office and the old post offices in Braamfontein and Jeppe, also the Marshall Square buildings, the bridge over the Olifants River, Wierda Bridge over Ses-Myl-Spruit on the Pretoria Road (the railings have been incorporated into the gates to Rivonia Primary School), the forts of Klapperkop and Schanskop in Pretoria and the Johannesburg Fort. In addition he surveyed the Delagoa Bay railway line. His salary was £500 a year.
Nellie Wierda married Charles Ferdinand Obermeyer who had come from Holland in 1882. He chose to become a most skillful cabinet-maker and later a builder and contractor. During the...
