Johannesburg

In 1943 my parents, Kurt and Lorna Hepner, then living in Parktown North, bought a 3 acre stand in Bryanston. The one they chose sloped gently northwards from Mandeville Road and afforded uninterrupted views of the Magaliesberg. It also had the bonus of a well, stream and large pond which teemed with birdlife such as red and yellow bishop birds nesting in the reeds and terrapins and moorhens on the water.

Unfortunately, the estate agent (brother of the well known Anglo American director Sidney Spiro) mistook the stand number and my parents found they’d bought stand number 511 instead of 512. They’d earlier purchased another stand on the other side of Bryanston, and luckily managed to do an exchange.

Steffen Ahrends was commissioned to design their house on Stand 512. My father disliked corridors, so rather than a long passageway with bedrooms opening off it, the house was much more of a square shape. It was positioned in the top eastern corner of the property so that the view down the slope was given maximum effect.

Steffen Ahrends drawing for Ponden House 1943

The roof was thatched and the upper storey displayed typical Ahrends dormer windows. The chimneys were covered with Ahrends’ wavy iron cowlings, also one...

Lucille Davie recently hit the milestone of 100 articles on The Heritage Portal (click here to browse). You know her stories and now you can get to know her a little better...

What are your favourite articles from your archive?

I feel privileged, as a journalist with an interest in history, to have interviewed some of the people relevant to our recent history over the 14-year period when I was writing these stories. Some of the memorable interviews and stories I’ve written over some years: Dorothy Molefe and Antoinette Sithole, Hector Pieterson’s mother and sister; Nomkhitha Mashinini, Tiestsi Mashinene’s mother; several former Constitutional Court judges; George Bizos; Don Mattera, Chris van Wyk, Revil Mason, Phillip Tobias, Willem Boshoff; Jurgen Schadeberg; Westdene Dam disaster survivors; Reverend Sam Buti; Arthur Ginsberg, the creator of Chappies bubblegum, and exploring the cave in which the Foster Gang committed suicide, and writing the story.

Foster Gang Cave 

I enjoyed researching and writing about the Amawasha in Joburg, the entrepreneurial washer men from KwaZulu-Natal; and Nongoloza, the rebel Zulu who turned criminal in Joburg, and whose legacy is felt in prisons systems to this day, 75 years later. In 2003 I went down into the safety deposit vault basement of Somerset House in the Joburg inner city, originally housing the United Building Society, and, together with the owner, we found...

Before the discovery of gold in 1886, the Witwatersrand rang with the sound of sparkling springs, streams and waterfalls. These springs and streams are now hard to find as they have been put in pipes or canals under the city. Even if you can find the outfalls of these original springs and spruits (small streams), they are badly polluted. Sewage spills and uncollected rubbish, along with acid mine drainage and other chemical contamination, have put water quality into crisis in the heavily populated and industrialised Witwatersrand landscape.

It was of interest to me to find one of these hidden streams in the City and Suburban area of Johannesburg next to the N2 motorway. The current manifestation of this stream is a concrete and dressed stone canal and its toxic outflow. The quality of the emergent water is so bad that is must surely be emblematic of Johannesburg’s severe water pollution, decaying infrastructure and waste disposal challenges. Over a distance of about 2 km between a possible pristine ground water source to the north and the outflow, terrible contamination of the water occurs as it flows underground. This deadly-looking water flows south, untreated, into more natural river systems to become part of the Vaal system.

Between its hidden source and the outflow, there is an underground pipe and then an open air canal with four road bridges before the stream flows out into the open. One does have to wonder why there is a pipe in one section and a canal...

Johannesburg came into being on 20 September 1886 and took at least 10 years to resemble something that could be called a town. It took another year before the first mayor, a magistrate, was appointed. The city has had a host of interesting mayors - bakers, drapers, estate agents, grocers, oculists (opticians), builders and a housewife.

Early Johannesburg

Its first mayor was Johan Zulch de Villiers, inaugurated on 1 October, 1897.

De Villiers was, according to A concise historical dictionary of Greater Johannesburg, by Naomi and Reuben Musiker, not a resident Joburger – he arrived in the town on the day of his appointment. He had been special landdrost (magistrate) in a number of towns: Pretoria, Barberton, Lydenburg, and in Swaziland, between 1881 and 1897.

According to GA Leyds in A History of Johannesburg, De Villiers was “extremely popular with all sections, and during his regime, due to the tact and goodwill with which he performed his duties, combining his responsibilities to the Central government with his work for the Stadsraad, there were surprisingly few instances of serious friction in the working of municipal administration”.

De Villiers was born in Paarl in 1845, writes Leyds. He had a reputation of being “a reliable, honest and tactful official”.

In Johannesburg he lived at 22 Koch Street near Joubert Park, now the site of the...

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...

There are very few people in the heritage world that don't know the name Kathy Munro. She is a writer, speaker, reviewer, activist, teacher, mentor, organiser, friend and so much more. We asked her a few questions about her life in heritage and beyond...

What excites you at the moment?

The case of the Ocean Terminal complex and the Durmarine building in Durban – important modernist buildings dating back to 1962. The intention of Transnet is to demolish, flatten and create an unimaginative, historically rootless car export parking area for storing and shipping cars for export. I find this makes me angry because it is the approach of a philistine to think it is OK to demolish; there is an opportunity to work with all those dreams and realities created in the past by fine architects; for a heritage building to live it must have a future purpose but it is imagination that can give us that opportunity. A fine example of conversion so that a heritage building can live again is the Gauteng Legislature created from the Johannesburg City Hall complex done by the late Marcus Holmes and Mira Fassler.

Ocean Terminal Building (Kathy Munro)

What books are your reading?

The Man before the Mahatma, MK Gandhi , Attorney at Law by Charles DiSalvo; a biography of Milner by...

In my research in our old cemeteries, I sometimes find the headstones of prominent citizens of Johannesburg, which have been vandalized. This has been the case in the three stones featured here.

Charles Chudleigh – many South Africans reading this will remember shopping at the OK Bazaars, an affordable, family department store found in most big cities and towns around the country. But are you aware of its history? In 1854 in the Scilly Islands off Land’s End, Cornwall, Richard and Elizabeth Chudleigh welcomed their fifth of seven sons into the world. Remarkably, all these sons made it into adulthood. This particular son was Charles who came to South Africa in 1874. In about 1884, he set up business as a Draper in Queenstown, Cape Colony where in 1885 at the age of 31, he married his life’s partner, Margaret Jane Stirton. Samuel, his brother, was a witness at the ceremony, so we assume, he was in partnership with Charles in the drapery business already.

Charles Chudleigh

The two brothers moved up to the very young Johannesburg in June 1889 when Johannesburg was barely three years old. They realized the potential in this dusty mining town and opened a drapery shop in Eloff Street (corner of Pritchard Street) which they called Mount’s Bay House. In 1893 they built a larger store, a quaint...

Congratulations to all projects and their architects who were recognised at the award ceremony.

1. Herbert Prins Colosseum Trophy and Heritage Award: Johannesburg Contemporary Art Foundation, StudioMAS Architects.

Conversion of Forest Town Sub Station into JCAF art gallery In essence the project entailed the conversion of an abandoned tram service station and electrical substation into a world class contemporary art gallery. The key design constraint was to work within the existing building fabric which was also heritage-protected, thus calling for meticulous renovations and well-considered additions rather than a new build. Beyond the limitations imposed by the heritage agency, the client had very strong ambitions to restore the building in a respectful way making it an extremely exciting project for us.

As this building has been around for a hundred years is it clearly well-rooted in its place. It has always been a prominent feature in Forest Town and has already had a life serving the town in a different way. The challenge was to give the building a new identity without changing its character. This started with the design of the sidewalks – they are generous in size and were designed without a kerb so there is no disconnect from the street.

A great deal of consideration went into how one enters the building. The main entrance is a pedestrian-only entrance with the new steel entrance structure which pokes its head over the wall, marking the way in. This structure sits along the old tram lines and honours its memory...

A while ago members of our team were clearing ivy off a large area of the General Section in Brixton Cemetery, to find out whose headstones were poking up through the ivy. Most of the headstones were visible as raised parts of the all-enveloping ivy. In amongst the others was the headstone of Catherine Mackenzie which we had originally found in March 2006. Despite looking up the date of burial for Catherine in the burial registers, I was unable to find her, and she languished in my files for 16 years.

Back then, I was unaware of the resources that were available, so didn’t pursue the matter. Having re-found the headstone, I was able to do some more digging. The top half of the base stone (the cross on top has disappeared and I am hoping to find it under the ivy in the vicinity of the rest of the stone) has the date of death of someone else buried in this grave, so I went through the registers, letter by letter, looking for someone who died on that date. My perseverance paid off – this was Catherine’s husband but the surname was Brown and not Mackenzie! Mackenzie was her maiden name.

Headstone of Reverend...

Years ago, a friend who grew up in Parkview told me a story. She said that one of the Indian elephants at the Zoo ‘went crazy’ during one of the rides. The full details of this event are not recorded, but the children must have been rescued. My friend recalled that, instead of the elephant being retired after its years of service, it was shot. While I was unable to confirm the event, the story brought back my own memories of elephants at the Johannesburg Zoo.

Remembering childhood visits to the Johannesburg Zoo

Because we also lived in Parkview, we regularly visited the Johannesburg Zoo in the 1960s, walking there from Galway Road. As a child, I remember the dark Victorian-type dungeon cages for the lions, polar bears and hyenas, and we could always hear the lions roaring at night as well as the weird cries of the hyenas. I also remember the rides on the two Indian elephants, but I was too little (five years old) to try these rides. Below are some of the photographs my father took at the zoo in the 1960s.

Indian elephant being given peanuts at the Johannesburg Zoo (Victor Hearn, 1961)

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