Page 123 - Bulletin 19 2015

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gives an idea of the amount of ‘night soil’ that still had to be moved by bucket. In that year
they advertised for tenders to move 30,000 buckets of night soil at a charge of 7½d a pail.

The smell and nuisance attached to moving and disposing of this material was a problem of

many years’ standing and resulted in the building of the nearby subterranean station in 1934.

Dalebrook Place and False Bay House

The next property on the Main Road is F G Mills Store but this is incorrect as it was the
property of F J Mills. (Fig. 3.4.) This erf, 89622, was sold by the Rev. Faure in 1854 to

Daniel David Clear, an Irishman. It passed through various hands before being bought by

Frederick James Mills (see below). It was transferred to his brother, Henry William Mills and
then to Gerhardus Christian van Blerk the same day – 11 August 1902. Van Blerk was the

brother-in-law of F J Mills and both he and his sister were members of the well-known Kalk

Bay van Blerk family. In 1919 and for some years after, the ground floor was occupied by N
Napier a builder and E A Shaw & Co – electrical engineers. The building was bought by

Marthinus Louwrens Malherbe on 6 May 1919 and became known as Malherbe’s Building.
Malherbe had a Kalk Bay connection, too, being married to another van Blerk daughter.

The strip of land behind the Store running up to what would become Upper Quarterdeck

Road, (erven 89624 and 89627), had been donated by Mary Arthur to the trustees of St.
Paul’s Mission Church in 1887. The Church sold them to Malherbe for £250 each in 1920.

He was clearly a man of means. In 1922 he had a 3-bedroomed house abutting Quarterdeck
Road designed by the well-known architects Reid and Delbridge that he called False Bay

House. (Figs. 3.12 & 3.13.)

On 15 February 1924 the Cape Argus reported:

A very great improvement among the buildings along the Main road at Kalk Bay

is seen in the addition of another storey at Malherbe’s Building, opposite the
Dalebrook Pool, and the provision of fine balcony accommodation on each of