Page 98 - Bulletin 11 2007

95

“claimed to be an unqualified success.” Overhead wiring was erected and transformers
installed for 110 volt supplies to private consumers at 1s. per unit. There were 15

private consumers in 1908 and 41 in 1909. Streetlights were lit on dark nights only,
from 6 p.m. till 12.30 a.m.

Electric street lamps, and others innovations like the electrically-lit fountains, were just
two of a multitude of cast-iron utilities and fittings that filled the Victorian streetscape

giving it much of its character. (Fig. 2.19). They were produced in the great foundries of
England and Scotland, ordered from catalogues or showrooms there, and then shipped

to towns and cities throughout the Empire. The KB - MM lamp pillars, two of which
stand outside the present Kalk Bay Community Centre, were manufactured in London

by Roland Carr & Co.

Developments in electricity supply.

Twelve months after Royal Road Power Station was opened, the VFP commissioned
their first coal-fired power station at Brakpan. By 1913, the VFP had four power

stations with a total of nearly 180 MW of plant in operation or under construction. That
is 600 times the capacity of Royal Road! At one time the VFP was the largest power

supply undertaking in the British Empire. The standard price of power to the mines was
a little over a half-pence per unit! The VFP provided the basic system from which the

present Eskom system was developed, the VFP stations having been taken over by

Eskom in 1948.

The year following the opening of Royal Road, electricity was supplied for lighting the
railway stations at Kalk Bay, St. James, Muizenberg and Lakeside. The Marine

Aquarium, and Seahurst and St. James Hotels had already been supplied and the King’s
and Masonic Hotels requested a supply. Some years later, towards the end of 1910, Mr

Bernard Brown, of the South African Bioscope Company, established a permanent

‘Electric Theatre’ in Muizenberg and Kalk Bay (in the church hall in ‘Stonehaven’).
The silent movies shown were powered by a boy on a bicycle while a pianist supplied a