Page 147 - Bulletin 19 2015

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Another 1869 letter gives am interesting description of Kalk Bay at that time:

...our watering place is very different from an English one, and one has to be prepared for a
good deal of inconvenience in going there. There are at the most 30 respectable houses -

many very dilapidated and the furniture still worse. The rest are all fishermen's huts. We took
all the habitable rooms in the hotel which consisted of only four - one sitting room which

served also as a dining room and three bedrooms upstairs...Still the poor people tried very

hard to make us comfortable and erected a tent for the children on the beach; and as we had
not a single wet day during our fortnight there, they were able to make it their daily nursery.

On 4 November 1869 she wrote to tell her aunt that her father had bought a house in Kalk

Bay a fortnight before. The site of this building is unknown. She said her aunt would laugh if
she could see it:

….but it is a good house for Kalk Bay...a long narrow house, only one room deep, downstairs

there are four nice rooms all in a row of which the kitchen makes one; as you enter, of
course, there is a sort of little hall with a funny little steep stair opposite the door leading to

the upper rooms of which there are four and a lobby; they are bright and airy with sloping
thatch roofs...

Beaufort Cottage is on the site of one of the oldest buildings in Kalk Bay as is shown on the

1816 erf plan. It is safe to say that it got its name after being bought by Sir John Molteno, the

‘Lion of Beaufort’. (Fig. 3.34.) It was a holiday cottage for his large family and he bought it
from Alexander Maderose in 1876. On his death in 1886 the property and the land behind it,

valued at £800 was transferred to his son-in-law Thomas Johnson Anderson. In 1893 it was

transferred to Dr Charles Murray and to Maria Anderson in 1901. On her death it came back
into the possession of Thomas Anderson in 1907.

In 1944 Beaufort Cottage and the lot behind it was sold to another distinguished man – Chief

Justice James Stratford. He subdivided the erf and built his own home Robin Rise (see
below). In 1945 Beaufort Cottage (erf 89617) was bought Phyllis Maude Stevenson who

applied to convert the kitchen into a garage on to Main Rd. This involved the demolition of a

raised stone terrace in front of the kitchen and the erection of a double door in place of the
existing kitchen, and this was approved. At some time, the dormers were removed and the