Page 39 - Bulletin 14 2010

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The Lion’s Head Gold Mine

No account of the mines of the Cape Peninsula would be complete without some account,
however brief, of the Lion’s Head gold mine. (Fig. 1.23.) Although there are brief

descriptions of various aspects of this undertaking in a number of newspaper articles and

books on the history of Cape Town in general and the Signal Hill / Lion’s Head area in
particular, there is no detailed account of the rise and fall of this most curious venture –

although the author is at present working on one.

Suffice it here to say that sometime in 1886 gold was discovered on the flank of Lion’s Head
and a syndicate formed to exploit the discovery. A shaft some 90 feet (c. 28 m) was sunk and

rock samples from the mine assayed by Prof. P. D. Hahn, Professor of Chemistry at the South

African College (the predecessor of the University of Cape Town), as well as by the London
firm of Savery and Co. Although the assay results were hardly encouraging, in late-1887 a

company, “The Lion’s Head (Cape Town) Gold Mining Company,” with a nominal share

capital of £20,000, was floated and further mining operations continued. However, as one
could have predicted, the venture was not profitable and some time later it closed. As the shaft

was a hazardous feature of the hill in 1951 it was filled in by the Cape Town City Council.