Page 125 - Bulletin 19 2015

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the upper floors. The addition and alteration have had the effect of providing a
building which strikes the eye very pleasantly. (Fig. 3.14.)

The building referred to here as Malherbe’s Building was later called False Bay Flats before

becoming Dalebrook Flats, Dalebrook Place and finally in 2015 Agapanthus.

Malherbe battled with successive councils about the terrible smells and noise coming from

the sewage pump station, although he must have been aware of the problem when he bought
the property. In 1921, after threatening legal action he was given £155 in compensation,

quieter pumps were installed, and the prominent vent pipe above Boyes Drive was installed at

great cost. This cast iron chimney was removed by metal thieves in late 2014.

Another complaint which ran between 1928 and 1932 shows that carts of ‘night soil’ were

being brought to the building and Malherbe wanted a 6ft wall erected between his flats and
the pump station. As he succinctly put it

“….an open cart with sewerage buckets arrives at 8.30 am and spends an hour

and a half loading and offloading. Now imagine this is done about 15yds from

where people are sitting at their breakfast tables…”

He also had many run-ins with Council about electric cables and drainage from the upper end

of his property.

Malherbe was an expert on Karoo succulents and an avid gardener and there was a beautiful
garden below his house. We are told that although he did not own the land on the upper side

of Quarterdeck Road he planted an extensive and much admired Karoo garden there too. In
1936 Malherbe sold False Bay House and the other buildings, by then called False Bay Flats,

to Russell Warden Ovenstone. When Ovenstone died aged 56 in 1948 False Bay Flats was

valued at £9,250 in his estate. He had also owned land described as The Hut Kalk Bay