Page 36 - Bulletin 15 2011

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Stephen was buried in St. Peter’s graveyard, Mowbray, below the Groote Schuur Hospital

beside the grave of his wife Emily. The graves were reinterred into a nearby Garden of
Remembrance in the late 1990s to make room for a shopping centre development.

Stephen’s oldest son, George William, inherited his father’s shares in George Findlay & Co.

Ltd. The land on the ‘Villa Capri’ site at St. James was subdivided and Stephen’s youngest
son, Harold, bought the two plots that had made up the front garden of the house together

with three other plots higher up the hill. Villa Capri itself was bought by Francis ‘Matabele’

Thompson who, together with Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd, had formed the Syndicate that
had been granted mineral rights by King Lobengula in the Matabele Concession in what was

to become Rhodesia. Harold immediately sold the two garden plots at a profit to Thompson,
who also bought the vacant plot behind the house, in this way consolidating Lots 1 to 4 of the

Villa Capri estate. Thompson died in 1927 and Florence Trill, Stephen’s oldest daughter,
bought ‘Villa Capri’ in 1929, and had architects Roberts and Small rebuild its wooden

verandah in brick and align the entrance steps with the front door of the house. (Fig. 1.39.)

Four years prior to that, in 1926, Florence’s younger sister Ida and her husband Alfred

Precious had bought a plot that had been part of the Villa Capri Estate, on the corner of Capri

and Main Roads, and built a home, ‘Sandy Beach’. Their home still stands and operates as the
‘Sonnekus’ Guest House today. (Figs. 1.40 & 1.41.)

In 1921, just before his father’s death, Stephen’s oldest son, George William Trill decided to

change his family surname to Findlay. He had taken over George Findlay & Co. Ltd. and was
to inherit all Stephen’s shares, but no one with the name Findlay existed to run the business.

However his cousin George Marquard Findlay of Findlay and Tait objected to this, so George

William took his wife’s mother’s maiden name, Stuart, and combined it with his own
mother’s maiden name to create the name Stuart-Findlay. (Figs. 1.42 & 1.43.)

George William Trill / Stuart-Findlay

My grandfather George William was born in King William’s Town in 1865. After his parents

moved to Cape Town, when he was about five, he attended various schools before completing

his education at St. Saviour’s School, Rondebosch, which has since amalgamated with the