Page 71 - Bulletin 12 2008

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architectural means. Many of the country towns in the Cape, too, are based on variations
on the gridiron system.

Town Layout at the Cape

During the first century-and-a-half, the surveyor’s town remained the exception rather
than the rule, probably precisely because the Dutch never embarked on a systematic

town-founding policy. Stellenbosch was consciously founded, but its tiny core soon
developed along largely organic lines. Striking, though not really surprising in a colony

so single-mindedly given to agricultural production, is the virtual absence of real river
or harbour towns. Cape Town in its plan can hardly be called a harbour town, long

virtually ignoring the sweep of its bay. The only real exception is Simon’s Town, where

the contiguous buildings squeezed between the curving road and the steep slopes
behind, looking out over a lively dockyard, produce a truly old-world character.

Another unplanned town, or perhaps rather village, is Wynberg, now within the

banlieue of Cape Town. It grew around crossroads, and the spontaneity of its origins
resulted in a charm that persists till today.

th
For the dozens of towns established during the 19 century, however, orthogonal grids
became de rigueur. In this, the Cape colony followed the age-old ‘colonial’ model also
current in other British colonies, notably those in North America.

At the Cape the Industrial Revolution made a much-belated appearance only in the early
th
20 century. Its villages long remained ‘vernacular’ in the sense of consisting of ‘home-
built’ structures by local builders continuing to use time-honoured materials, techniques
and styles that aim at ‘fitting in’ rather than ‘standing out’. As a result, they presented

an entirely harmonious built environment in which even churches and their parsonages
and the occasional public building follow the prevalent modes. What we perceive as the

charm of an ‘architecture without architects’ was still the norm here until not much

longer than a century ago.