The City of Johannesburg and Johannesburg Heritage Foundation honoured Brixton with a blue plaque in April 2024 for one of the earliest wood and iron buildings. This is the first of a series of blue plaques for this popular community-minded suburb revealing a growing awareness that many sites and places are worthy of heritage recognition.
Blue plaque (Kathy Munro)
Remarkably this shop-cum dwelling had already been declared a National Monument in 1983, by the old National Monuments Council. After 1994, the Council was dissolved in favour of a new provincial system but the old NMC badge has been preserved.
Old National Monument plaque (Kathy Munro)
The objective of a Johannesburg blue plaque is to encourage an appreciation of local heritage properties. A blue plaque is a symbol of civil society recognition.
Brixton was surveyed in 1902 for the Auckland Park Real Estate Company on land that had been part of the Braamfontein farm. It was named for its counterpart, the suburb of Brixton...
Visiting Westcliff is always a treat. I feel like a Johannesburg time traveller when driving north along Jan Smuts Avenue and turning left at The Valley Road. In October and November it is a riot of purple when the jacaranda trees and the creeping bougainvillea blossom. E. M. Macphail, who wrote the charming book The Story of Westcliff in 1986, makes it her quest to find the right descriptive words for Westcliff. She comes up with “rich, elite, chic, wealthy, posh, privileged, stuffy, spacious, green seclusion”.
Westcliff is still regarded as a luxury suburb of choice for the affluent families of Johannesburg. It is a suburb of mansions, large stands, wide roads, secluded greenery, beautiful gardens, imposing gates, aged trees and high walls. Westcliff is one of the most beautiful suburbs of the City. It is a jewel of a garden suburb on a prime Witwatersrand ridge and has a unique charm.
Ye Rokkes, an iconic Westcliff mansion designed by the firm Aburrow and Treeby in 1902.
There are many Baker houses in Westcliff. Baker and his partners brought Kent and the spirit of the English home counties to the ridges of the burgeoning town but built with the honey-hewed kopje rocks found on site.
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Ladies Mile, the road leading out of Bergvliet is well known, but the story behind the name is obscure and not to be found on the internet. It is an interesting tale which deserves to be repeated. The story is after all about the very fabric of Cape Town.
In the beginning there was the estate Groot Constantia, granted to Simon van der Stel in 1682. It was a large parcel of land, too big to be practical even in those days of slave labour. Van der Stel died in 1712, and two years later the property was sold off in three portions named Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia and Bergvliet. There were other farms in the area as well, sharing the name Constantia in one way or another.
Groot Constantia Manor House (SJ De Klerk)
Bergvliet was sold in 1776 to Hendrik Eksteen who had a son of the same name. The son inherited the farm.
Klein Constantia belonged to Lambertus Colijn who married Leonora and then died leaving Leonora a wealthy woman. Leonora presumably sold Klein Constantia at this point. She had two sons, and she set one son up in Nova Constantia to the west of Spaanschemaat Road and one in Sweet...
Lord Grey, the Colonial Secretary in London in November 1848 proposed to modify the penal transport provisions to include the Cape Colony as a destination for convicts. The British had stopped using Australia as their dumping ground for convicts. When news of this idea reached the Cape there was widespread outrage. Dutchmen and Englishmen, farmers and townsfolk, joined in utter condemnation of the plan. Strong views were expressed. Never would this be allowed. Within ten days some 5 000 residents, ‘one of the largest and most respectable public meetings ever held in Cape Town’ gathered to protest (see main image). A pledge was signed not to receive or employ any convicts. Petitions were widely signed and sent to Queen Victoria. An Anti-Convict Committee was formed of which John Fairbairn was elected secretary. John Fairbairn was a prominent and liberal citizen and founder of Old Mutual, amongst many other achievements. His involvement would lead to him getting beaten up and his house in Green Point wrecked by government thugs, such was the tension that arose.
The following year in September, the first convict ship, Neptune, sailed into Table Bay with 300 convicts aboard. The fury of the populace was uncontained. There would be a total ban on any contact with the ship. No produce, no food, no visitors, not even the sick would be landed. Neptune relocated to Simon’s Bay to avoid the bitter campaign. The ban on selling food to the Neptune was extended to all government institutions to prevent them...
I recently read an article by Professor Kathy Munro about Clarendon Circle, East Avenue and Clarendon Place in Hillbrow, Johannesburg (click here to read). Readers may be interested to know how the name of Clarendon Place came about.
In 1959 the City of Johannesburg had taken a decision to remove Clarendon Circle, and replace it with robots. East Avenue, which then ran around the Circle, was a major road connecting the end of Louis Botha Avenue and on into the city, from Pretoria. There were no freeways at that time.
Before and after shots (sourced by Marc Latilla)
The government had during that period been intent on changing anything English-sounding – FC Erasmus the Minister of Defence had been embarking on names of military units and rank structures, so it appeared to an organisation I belonged to at the time, UNESSA (United English-speaking South Africans), that the government would be quite happy to see the name of a previous Governor-General, the Earl of Clarendon, disappear from Johannesburg.
The recent article by Kathy Munro on Liliesleaf farm and Rivonia (click here to read) had me digging out and reviewing some notes I made a while back.
This Robinson family, like many at that time, came to South Africa when then family head, Peter Robinson was sent out from England to take charge of the local branch of the large company he was employed by in London. Scaffolding Great Britain (SGB) promoted Peter Robinson to Managing Director of SGB South Africa and he arrived in the country in mid-1959, to be followed by the rest of his family and his own, by now widowed, mother. Eldest son Howard, then aged 14, convinced the family to let him fly out by BOAC Bristol Britannia while the rest of the family sailed from Southampton in December 1959 on the Union Castle Lines ship Stirling Castle. Those who enjoyed the sea trip were Grandma Robinson, Mary (wife of Peter), Mark (12 yearold second son), Angela (8)* and the family cat Midge! ** First landfall in South Africa was at Cape Town on New Year’s Day 1960 and the Coon Carnival was a colourful if slightly bewildering introduction to the country. We weren't sure if this was what we would see every day!
The article below forms part of a larger piece by Kathy Munro on the Dix House in Kensington. Click here to read.
Langermann and the development of Kensington
Max Langermann obtained a lease to create a proposed township in 1896/97. He named it Kensington after the London borough. An 1899 map of the Witwatersrand gold fields (Wood and Ortlepp) features “Kensington proposed township” but the Anglo Boer War clearly disrupted plans for development. Nonetheless, Langermann is considered to be the father of Kensington and today he is remembered in Langermann Kop (incorrectly spelt as Langerman) and Langermann Drive.
The view from Langermann Kop (The Heritage Portal)
Langermann hailed from Bavaria Germany and arrived on the Witwatersrand in 1886. He was an early mining entrepreneur and recognized as a Rand Pioneer (he was a member of the Rand Pioneers Association). Langermann was a member of the Reform Committee of Uitlanders who in 1895 were involved in the Jameson Raid debacle. He was imprisoned and fined for his participation in that attempted coup. He was a man of importance in early Johannesburg. After the Boer War, Langermann sat on the newly formed Johannesburg Town Council between 1903 and 1905. He played a leading role in the...
The origins of the hardcover book entitled, 'District Six - Memories, Thoughts and Images' which I have edited goes back to a series of photographs, taken by my late uncle, Jan Greshoff, in the early and mid-1970’s.
Book Cover
Jan was an architect who worked in CT from the 60s to the 80s. He was a private and modest man and didn't talk much about his photography. Jan had no children and it was only after he died that his wife passed his archive of negatives on to us, his nephews and niece, that we discovered the full extent of his archive. His photographs covered many areas around Cape Town, including District Six.
In common with many architects, Jan was always a keen photographer and his profession certainly informed his work and his interest in his environment. He was a very close friend of Jansje Wissema, who was commissioned to photograph District Six for the South African Institute of Architects at roughly the same time that Jan was photographing the area. Their projects fed off each other to some extent. Ben & Helen Kies, both teachers, at District Six schools Trafalgar High School & Harold Cressy High School, respectively, were also friends of Jan and this may also have had an impact on his photographs of District Six in particular. Aside from this he was...
The township of Parkmore was established in 1904 – making it one of the oldest northern suburbs in the Johannesburg Metro. Parkmore was proclaimed in the aftermath of the South African War (1899-1902). The ending of hostilities brought with it the expectation of economic stability and a rise in property prices in what had become the British colony of the Transvaal.
Sketch plan showing position of Parkmore
The area that once comprised the independent town of Sandton, north of Johannesburg, originally consisted of four large farms that settling Voortrekkers had taken up, displacing the African communities that had used the area for many centuries before them. One of these was Zandfontein (No. 1, later No. 42 IR), part of which was to become Parkmore. The whole farm had been owned by Jan Christoffel Esterhuysen who, in the late 1840s, had arrived from Natal with his large family. After Britain had annexed Natal in 1843, he and others found themselves under the same uncongenial British rule from which they had intended to escape in the Cape Colony and so they trekked again.
In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie sits down with the epic storyteller, Chris van Wyk. The piece was originally published on the City of Joburg's website on 4 August 2004. Chris van Wyk passed away on 3 October 2014.
Writer and poet Chris van Wyk says he loves to skinder - “I skinder more than most women.” And that skinder or gossip accounts for a large part of his success as a writer.
As a young child he listened in on his mother’s skinder with her friends, even when she chased him away to another part of their four-roomed house. These stories of Riverlea are poignantly and humorously portrayed in Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, a childhood memoir.
In the chapter entitled ‘The Mouse’ he writes: “You will not believe the kind of information you can pick up just by keeping your ears open. There are certain little tricks you have to observe to prevent yourself from being caught eavesdropping.”
Firstly, he writes, don’t behave like a mouse because “if you’re quiet they know you’re listening”. Instead, “make busy noises like drinking a glass of water, singing bits from pop songs, calling to the dog outside”. Secondly, “do something while you’re listening. Read a book or do some homework” so that you’re not just staring into space when they enter the room. Thirdly, watch out that you don’t laugh at a joke you overhear. And, “If Ma calls you, don’t answer immediately. If you do, it’s a dead...
