Page 73 - Bulletin 12 2008

70

Breaking with the Grid

th
In the fourth quarter of the 19 century a new and rather different type of townscape
made its appearance: the free-standing ‘villa’. The principle of the Victorian villa

standing in the middle of its plot can be associated with the romantic ideal of the

dwelling interacting with its setting. It is the same notion that also gave rise to such
features as the veranda/balcony and the bay-window. In Cape Town there are whole

districts of them in the upper Table Valley, Rosebank, Rondebosch and Kenilworth, and
th
both Stellenbosch and Paarl have charming, individualistic villas in their late 19 -
th
century extensions. Another new building type appearing during the later 19 century in
larger towns was the ‘terrace’, now better known as semi-detached housing, providing

cheaper and more concentrated accommodation. In the upper Table Valley, especially in

the Hatfield Street area, and in the Atlantic suburbs, they contribute much to the quality
and variety of the Victorian streetscape, as they do in lower-income districts like the

former District Six, Woodstock and Observatory. Such terraces could be single-

storeyed, sometimes in staggered arrangements when in sloping streets, or double-
storeyed in more unified designs.

Towns with a Difference: Wynberg (Figs. 3.1 – 3.9)

All along the ‘great south road’ connecting Cape Town with the winter anchorage at

Simon’s Bay, where a settlement had existed from as early as 1743, a string of small
th
th
nuclei and stop-over places developed during the late-18 and 19 centuries. They
developed their raison d’etre from the always quite intense traffic along this road, while

also servicing the strip of farmland along the foot of the mountain and in the Constantia
valley. Several of these were there as hamlets from an early stage and can still be traced,

fossilized in the urban fabric of present-day greater Cape Town. Woodstock had an
Anglican church from 1856, Mowbray from 1854, Rondebosch from as early as 1832,

Newlands from 1857, Claremont from 1853.