Page 95 - Bulletin 12 2008

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The name Kalk Bay was in use from an early stage and refers to the lime-kilns operated
here by the VOC. It was also the site of a Company post that proved of little use against

the British forces in 1795. The sheltered position of the bay proved attractive to
fishermen, and very early photographs show several modest cottages and huts, some of

them built of wattle and daub, standing both on ‘the Point’ and by the natural harbour,

as well as higher up the coastal road. From 1807, when whaling was banned from
Simon’s Town because its stench upset the naval authorities, less-populous Kalk Bay

benefited – at least commercially! A whaling enterprise was run by Jan Hendrik Muller
in the 1820s and ‘30s from his naval station now known as Villa Capri in what is today

St. James. And in the 1870s the community’s numbers were swelled by the arrival of
several groups of Filipino fishermen, whose Spanish surnames are still much in

evidence locally.

The settlement now started assuming village-like qualities, though its footprint

remained informal and strung out along the (by now hard-surfaced) coastal road. In the

1870s it acquired both a Dutch Reformed church – modestly aligned along the road –
and the picturesque Holy Trinity church set back behind a shaded green and a lych gate.

A Roman Catholic church, with many of the ‘Manilas’ from the Philippines among its
flock, was built below the road [but had to make way for the railway in 1883, its

function being taken over by the impressive Star of the Sea Convent in St.James.] A
Muslim community also existed by this time. A small harbour pier was constructed. The

King’s Hotel overlooked the harbour, first a thatched cottage, later with an upper storey

and balcony.

By the end of the century the coast between Muizenberg and Kalk Bay had become
built up continuously, apart from the bay area almost exclusively with holiday and

retirement accommodation of the well-heeled. The two were joined in one municipality
in 1895. A commercial district grew along the main road near the Kalk Bay station, and

streets now also started to appear up the mountain slope behind the main road. Scenic

Boyes Drive, constructed in the 1920s, today forms the upper boundary of the coastal
strip. In the kloof above the harbour, the Middedorp with its outspan, the built-up area