Hi there, would you like to travel with us? We are in Port St Francis for the weekend, and thought you might like to come along for the ride! It is home away from home for many Port Elizabethans who have properties here, as it is just an hour away on a good freeway, and has a delightful laid back holiday village atmosphere.St Francis, as it is affectionately known, actually consists of Port Saint Francis, St Francis Bay and Cape…
One of the prime beaches in Port Elizabeth in the early years was the North End Beach. If you look at this article on tall ships wrecked in a massive gale, the ships shown in the vintage photographs were stranded on North End Beach. Sadly the land was taken over by the Railways, and a large portion along the beautiful beach was reclaimed, and is now taken up by railway lines and overhead cables. (Our city fathers in the town…
This sports oval, now host to many school sports days and track and cycle events, started out as a muddy vlei (wetland) known in the late 1800s as "Russell Road Dam". It is right next to the lands which belonged to the London Missionary Society, where bubonic plague broke out in 1902. The vlei was drained in 1899 and a cycle track constructed, but it must have fallen into disrepair, because in 1911, the PE Amateur Athletic and Cycling club…
Another of the "Kloofs" in PE which carries a major arterial road used to be called Coopers Kloof, until Albany Road was built through it. Construction began in 1865. This building is Port Elizabeth's Old Fire Station, built in 1930, which has been replaced by a modern new facility in Summerstrand. It is now used as an office complex. Behind it, you can see the cliff face that formed part of the river valley. Above it is the Old Erica…
One of the main suburbs of Port Elizabeth is Walmer. In the early days, it was a seperate village with its own Town Hall, but it has long since been absorbed into the PE Metropole. Because much of the coastal part of the city is built on a series of sandstone hills, bisected by fairly steep river valleys (known locally as kloofs from the Afrikaans, and pronounced more or less clue-if, with the two syllables flowing together) the main arterial…
This was taken in March 2006, when PE received a visit from the beautiful Goteborg, a replica of the original East Indiaman “Götheborg", which ran aground at the entrance to Göteborg, Sweden on 12 September 1745. The ship was fully laden with goods such as tea, porcelain, silk and spices, and had almost reached dock after her third voyage to China. This beautiful replica stopped off here on her way to China, following the original trade route. When she left…
Today, as promised last week, here is a glimpse of the Edwards Memorial Church, which overlooks the graveyard that started this whole saga. If you want to follow the Richmond Hill story chronologically, hop back to that post, and then read the post on the Synagogue, where the connection between the different elements of the next few posts is set out. Then skip out the New Years Eve and New Year posts, and begin again with the Red Location post,…
Continuing with the Richmond Hill theme......In the early 1800s, when the British Colonial Government in Capetown realised that it was facing opposition from the local tribes to its attempts to colonise the Eastern Cape, it came up with a plan to bring in a large number of British settlers to colonise the land, and act as a buffer against the marauding tribes. (Of course they weren't told this... in a climate of extreme economic hardship in Britain at the time,…
Continuing the Richmond Hill story from yesterday (and if you are new to this thread, go back to the post called Places of Worship #6 for the background history), the area known as the Strangers Location and the lands owned by the London Missionary Society had an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in 1903, and were burned down. The residents were relocated to the Red Location in New Brighton, about 6km away as the crow flies, so naturally getting to work…
The other day we gave a brief description of the history of the Richmond Hill area. We mentioned that part of it was called the Strangers Location, and next to it was a section owned by the London Missionary Society, and used to help house workers, mostly employed at the Port. Here is an old wood and corrugated iron house from their section, much of which was destroyed in 1903.... but that is tomorrow's story!