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The area above Upper Quarterdeck Road up to Boyes Drive was at this time completely
devoid of houses. The lots were sold off by the City of Cape Town and were bought by spec.

buyers in an auction in 1904. The City would have been interested in generating more rates

but it was to be 30 years before houses started to be built on this land. The major impediment
to development was an almost complete lack of road access. The very steep and rough

Kimberley Road with a gradient of 1:7 was the only road access to what in 1939 became
Upper Quarterdeck Road. It was reserved as a roadway right up to Boyes Drive, as was a

road above Upper Quarterdeck. Boyes Drive (1923-1929) did not exist at this time. Many of

the planned roads were never built and were eventually absorbed into surrounding properties.
It was only in 1934 that Upper Quarterdeck Road was connected through to the Main Road.

Individual house histories

Dalebrook House

Dalebrook House was built in 1872 as the home of those good ladies Harriet and Charlotte

Humphries who lived there with Alice Pocklington until 1877. They returned to England,
transferring the property and the one next to it to Mary Arthur, the matron of the St. George’s

Orphanage in Cape Town. In 1877 Dalebrook House was sold to T J Anderson for £1,276

and he converted it into a boarding house. (Figs. 3.5 & 3.6.)

The Andersons will be dealt with in more detail (see below) but, facing financial problems,

the property was bought at auction by T J’s father in 1892. On the 2 May 1901 it was
transferred into the name of Otto Edward Ludwig Struck for £3,000. Struck was a German

butcher and manager of the Kalk Bay butchery owned by Tregidga & Co. He died

unexpectedly on 2 December 1902 aged only 42. Struck left his wife and seven children and
two unfinished cottages in Harris Road, both mortgaged. His poor widow was faced with a

number of problems. The death notice which showed the wrong date of death, and the
mortgage on the Harris Road property, which had been granted to Otto Struck, had to be re-

issued. But strangest of all was that it seems the Dalebrook House property should