Page 30 - Bulletin 15 2011

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Captain George died at Myrtle Grove in 1870 at the age of 71 and his wife Jane died eleven

years later. On George’s death George Findlay & Co. was taken over by their youngest
daughter Emily and her husband Stephen Trill.

Stephen Trill

Stephen Trill was my great-grandfather. (Figs. 1.12 & 1.32.) His father, also Stephen, was a

coal merchant based in Greenwich in Kent, England, and young Stephen was born there in

1830. His father died when he was 19 and after qualifying as an engineer Stephen sailed to the
Cape with his younger brother George. George Trill married Captain George’s second

youngest daughter Jane, and by 1863 Stephen Trill had married the youngest daughter Emily
and had taken her to live in King William’s Town as he had been appointed Colonial

Engineer for British Kaffraria. He was responsible for the construction of numerous buildings
and bridges in the province, and the breakwater of the East London harbour at the mouth of

the Buffalo River that had first been navigated by Captain John Findlay some thirty years

before.

Stephen had proved himself to be a man of ability so on Captain George’s death in 1870 the

Trills moved to Cape Town and Stephen took over George Findlay & Co. In 1882 he saw an
investment opportunity that had been created by the suburban railway and bought a large

portion of the ‘Bellevliet’ farm estate situated above and below Observatory station, and
stretching from the Lower Main Road down to the banks of the Liesbeek River. The Trill

family moved into the ‘Bellevliet’ homestead, a Cape Dutch farmhouse built in the late 1700s
that had been extensively remodelled in the Georgian style around 1830, and looked out over

the river towards the Observatory built by John Cannon. Stephen subdivided, built and sold

some 85 plots and houses on the portion of the estate that was situated on the mountain side of
the suburban railway line. (Figs. 1.33 – 1.35.) He was responsible for the many attractive late

Victorian homes in the area and Trill Road in that part of the suburb is named after him. By
1895 he had subdivided a similar number of plots around the house itself on the lower portion

of the estate, but the Bellevliet homestead was spared and still stands today in the centre of a
large YMCA complex, looking out over the Hartleyvale Football Ground.