In January I did a post about the Grave of Joseph Crowe at the Moth Memorial Hall in Uitenhage. Last week I was in town for a meeting at the NMB Science Centre nearby and drove past the Moth Memorial Hall just to find a vebracrete wall has been erected behind the little boundary wall that looks like sand bags. How thoroughly disappointing that the public can't see this anymore.
In Magennis Park just off Church Road (Graaff-Reinet Road) in Uitenhage is a monument that seems kinda out of place in this part of the province. It's a memorial commemorating those who died in the Morosi Mountain and Basuto Campaigns of 1879 and 1880-1882. Morosi's Mountain was the name given to a fortified mountain in the Drakensberg mountain range on the banks of the Orange River in southern Basutoland (modern day Lesotho). This was the site of a siege during the Gun War, also known…
People interested in history in Port Elizabeth should know the war memorials around St Georges Park. The Cenotaph, the Prince Alfred Guard Memorial and the bronze plaque where the South African Heavy Artillery Memorial used to be. Not many people know though that there is a fourth war memorial in the park. Right behind the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Gallery is a plaque with a small hedge in the form of a cross. Unfortunately the one side of the cross has died a…
The iconic South African playwright, Athol Fugard, famous for plays like Master Harold and the Boys, Sizwe Bansi is dead and The island, has very close links to Port Elizabeth. Fugard's mother ran the St Georges Park Tea Room which sadly stands empty today. It was here in 1950 that a teenage Fugard insulted his friend and father figure, Sam Semela, a waiter at the tearoom. Thirty years later still shamed my the incident he wrote the play Master Harold and…
Most South Africans are familiar with the 1960 Sharpeville massacre where the South African Police opened fire on a protesting crowd, killing 69 people. Very few people know though that on the 25th anniversary of Sharpeville, something similar happened in Langa township in Uitenhage when the Police opened fire on a crowd of mourners on their way to a banned funeral. Twenty people were killed in the incident on 21 March 1985 and it became known as the Langa Massacre. The incident was followed by…
Most people who have been to or driven past St Georges Park know the Cenotaph (war memorial) in front of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum. I wonder though how many people know that one of the figures forming part of the Cenotaph is St George himself, sheathing his sword moments after killing the dragon. St George's dragon slaying story is told as follow on Wikipedia: "...a dragon or crocodile makes its nest at the spring that provides water for the city of "Silene"…
Someone once sent me an email asking if I've ever been to the trig beacon on Lovemore Heights along with all the information about the beacon. I'd never even heard of it and decided to drive up there, coming up against a closed gate and filing it away for future exploration. After I took up Geocaching I noticed that there was a cache hidden close to the trig beacon and grabbed the opportunity to try and find it again, this time with…
There are a couple of war memorials around St Georges Park commemorating those from Port Elizabeth who have died in various wars over the years. A number of them refer to the two World Wars with the most prominent one being the Cenotaph in front of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum. One of the lesser known ones is a plaque on the front wall of the art museum.
Yesterday's post I did about the Port Elizabeth Cenotaph wasn't the first featuring this great memorial. A little while ago I received a comment on a previous post featuring the Cenotaph from Andy Gardner in Durban. Andy's father was James Gardner who designed the memorial and also did the sculptures which are part of it. On two sides of the memorial are sculptures, one representing a mother and child and the other St George, placed so for the purpose of symmetry. The woman…
One of the prominent memorials in Port Elizabeth is the Cenotaph standing in front of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Gallery. The city's war memorial was unveiled by former mayoress Mrs WF Savage on 10 November 1929. The memorial was the work of James Gardner of the Art School and was originally erected to the memory of the men from Port Elizabeth that fell during the Great War. After the Second World War memorial panels were added to the walls behind the…