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In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie tells the story of the infrastructure preparation for the 2010 World Cup and reveals the fascinating history of soccer in Johannesburg. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 14 February 2007. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

The Rand Stadium, the city’s oldest stadium, was built over 50 years ago because an earlier stadium became too small. But the 21st century has caught up with the stadium: it has been demolished because it too has become too small for the 2010 Fifa World Cup games.
 
Soccer has been played in the city for almost 120 years, and Joburg will be a major venue for the tournament.
 
“We are the only city in the country that will provide two host stadiums as well as the headquarters for Fifa and Local Organising Committee prior to, during and immediately following the event,” said the Executive Mayor Amos Masondo.
 
The city has four major soccer stadiums – FNB, Ellis Park, Orlando and Rand. The former two will undergo major revamps to become match venues, while the latter two are to be training venues, and have been demolished, to be replaced by stadiums that will accommodate many more fans and have much improved facilities.

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Charles Thrupp arrived in South Africa from the United Kingdom in 1882 and made his way to King Williams Town to take up a job with a local wholesaler. As the gold fields of the Rand began to boom, the firm called on Thrupp to open and manage a store in Johannesburg. After a few years of solid trade, the branch hit hard times and had to close its doors in 1892. For most employees this would have meant looking for another job but Thrupp saw Johannesburg's potential and acquired the grocery side of the ailing business. He opened his first store on the corner of President and Eloff Streets later that year.

Thrupps Store on the corner of President and Eloff Streets (Seventy Golden Years)

Thrupp was forced to leave Johannesburg when the Anglo-Boer War (South African War) broke out in 1899. He returned when hostilities ended in 1902 and re-established the business at a prime Pritchard Street address. The site was only one erf down from the prized corner of Eloff and Pritchard Streets which went on to become the peak land value intersection in South Africa for over seventy years.

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The aerial view of the old Borrowdale Farmhouse and outbuildings is truly remarkable. Today the area is dotted with established trees and multi-million rand homes so it is hard to imagine the rural landscape of the past. In the article below Valerie Gordon-Bennett shares some of her memories of growing up on Borrowdale Farm before and during the early days of Sandton. The article first appeared in the 1994 annual magazine of the Sandton Historical Association.

An aerial view of Borrowdale Farm

Borrowdale Road in River Club, Sandton, runs up from the Braamfontein Spruit to what is now Coleraine Drive. In the 1930s and 1940s, the farm of the same name -Borrowdale Farm - covered most of the ground between Coleraine Drive Ballyclare Drive, the Braamfontein Spruit and Bryanston Drive, with Bryanston on its north - nearly 200 acres.

Site of Borrowdale Farm (google maps)

The name ‘Borrowdale’ came from my great-grandfather, William Spark, who lived in the small village of that name in the Lake District, and operated a ferry on Derwent Water. His son, my grandfather, Joseph Spark, came to South Africa in 1898 and worked as an engineer on the railways. He married...