Page 99 - Bulletin 14 2010
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“The Undersigned’s Store and Erf, in Boom Street, adjoining the house of Mr. Meyer. At the
th
th
same Time will be put up, the Freehold Place called Patna, situated between the 8 and 9 Mile-
Stone, ………”
Cape Town Gazette, 8 December 1821, p. 1.
Milestone eight stood in Wynberg.
To conclude: given the early date at which the milestones were cut it is probable that they can be
attributed to Thibault; and second, it is possible they were cut by convicts, awaiting
Transportation to Australia, who it is known were put to stone-cutting in the Robben Island
quarry by Lord Charles Somerset. (Coates, pers. comm.)
Charles Michell: 1828 – 48
In 1828 Charles Michell was appointed the first Surveyor General and Civil Engineer at the Cape
and spent the next 20 years building roads, bridges and mountain passes throughout the Cape
Colony, and mapping its boundaries. He was a multi-talented man and also designed lighthouses
and harbour improvements, and was an accomplished watercolorist and engraver. (Richings,
2006.)
In 1831 his department took responsibility for the former Kaapsche Wapad from the Lines at Fort
Knokke to Simon’s Bay. Later, in 1845 he completed the hard road across the Cape Flats to
Bellville, known then as Maitland Road, and slate milestones were erected along it at this time.
(Mossop, 1927.) His biographer, Gordon Richings, inferred that, because the Main Road
milestones were also of slate, he had installed them too, but the evidence above shows this to
have been not the case.
The first description of a Main Road milestone was made by Dr James Scott who journeyed from
Simon’s Town to Cape Town on 16 July 1839:
