Plettenberg Bay

Marian Laserson (nee Spilkin) architect, town planner, champion of wetlands and heritage campaigner passed away on 10 July at the Morningside Clinic of the Covid-19 Virus.

Marian was born in 1936, the daughter of Joseph and Rachel Spilkin. Her father was a Johannesburg civil and structural engineer whose practice was very involved in many of the buildings in the city. He retired at age 85. He clearly sparked an interest in his daughter in engineering and building technology. From her mother, Marian drew her social activism, as Rachel was politically active in the Progressive Party.

At over the age of 80, Marian was still a practicing professional architect and activist. She was a person of considerable intellect but her human touch, her sense of humour and her service ethic were her outstanding traits. Marian was an active campaigner in town planning and urban regeneration across a wide swathe of the north east of Johannesburg.

Her interests were varied. She was someone who knew an enormous amount about city by laws, routes through the inner workings of the city, how to lodge objections (which she often did on behalf of public interest groups). Her advice was concise and practical and she always followed up with an email to explain exactly what we needed to do to fight a heritage case.

Marian was an authority on water matters and the conservation of wetlands. She supported David Bagg and the Huddle Park fight to save the golf course and its subsequent development into a...

Forest Hall is an historic estate located in The Crags near Plettenberg Bay. It hosts a spectrum of high end functions including grand weddings and corporate events (click here for some recent pics). In the article below, first published in Restorica in 1977, Patricia Storrar delves into the history of this unique property. Thank you to the Heritage Association of South Africa and the University of Pretoria for giving us permission to publish.

It is impossible to write the story of Forest Hall, a spacious old house standing in the heart of forested land some 23 kilometres east of Plettenberg Bay, without sketching briefly the history of the man who built it more than a century ago. Because it was the character of this man and the background from which he came which determined emphatically the size and style of the house and the setting in which it was placed. 

In June 1847 young William Henry Newdigate, third son of Francis Newdigate and his wife, Lady Barbara Maria Legge, daughter of the third Earl of Dartmouth, arrived to put down his roots in the green Piesang Valley, Plettenberg Bay. A scion of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Britain, he could trace his ancestry back on the paternal side through a long line of noble Newdigates - among whom titles abounded - to the 15th century. The Newdigate ancestral seat was - and still is today - Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, Warwickshire. William and two of his brothers were born at Astley Castle, the seat of...

In the following article Patricia Storrar provides a brief history of the Harker graves in Plettenberg Bay. The piece was published in the 1977 edition of Restorica, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa). Thank you to the University of Pretoria (copyright holders) for giving us permission to publish.

In the second issue of Restorica an appeal was made for assistance in the task of restoring the oldest graves at Plettenberg Bay, those of six members of the Harker family which lie a few metres to the east of Beacon Way, the main road running out of the town towards Port Elizabeth. The effort to restore these graves to some semblance of order and dignity after more than a century of neglect was made by a small committee of four residents of the Bay and the cost was met by private subscription. A low stone wall now encloses the area, the gravestones (all of slate) now rest securely on concrete slabs and the paths between the stones are neatly covered with stone chips to discourage further encroachment of the bush, grass and creepers which previously obscured the site. 

The six members of the Harker family buried here all lived in the first half of the 19th century and all of them died long before St. Peter's Church (Anglican) was built in 1879-80 in the Village of Formosa. All but two in fact, died before the little yellowwood Church of St. Andrew, Redbourn (declared an Historic...

The following article, looking at the history of the Old Rectory in Plettenberg Bay, was written by Patricia Storrar and appeared in the 1981 edition of Restorica, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa). For current details on the structure and more history of Plettenberg Bay contact the local historical society (click here for details). Thank you to the University of Pretoria (copyright holders) for giving us permission to publish.

Historically speaking, by far the most important building in Plettenberg Bay is the one known today as the Old Rectory. It is one of the few substantial structures in the Eastern Cape remaining virtually intact from the days of the Dutch East India Company. It adjoins the Old Timber Shed, which was proclaimed a National Monument in 1964 but is older than the latter by 10 years.

The first evidence that there was a fairly large building on this site in 1777 appears on a map of that year by an unknown cartographer, on which it is marked as "Verblijf voor het valk". On J .C. Frederici's better-known map of the "Platte Grond van S.E. Compagnies Post in de Plettenberg's Baay", drawn 12 years later, the structure is marked as "Project tot de Militaire Logies" and on another Frederici plan of the same period as "Militaaren Logies".

It was not surprising that it was thought necessary to house some military personnel at the Bay (then thought to be a promising harbour) towards the end of...