Page 158 - Bulletin 19 2015

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Senn Hütte, later Corrielair

On Upper Quarterdeck Road the first ‘new’ house to be built was Senn Hütte (41 Upper

Quarterdeck Road) for Hans August Storm in 1905. It first appears on an early map as Sin

Huth – it seemed an appropriate name for a weekend hideaway. Senn Hütte is a name rooted
in German, meaning ‘His Cottage’. The land (on erf 88704) was bought in the Municipal

auction of 1904 for £185 by George Dixon Tripp who sold it for £250 a month later to
Johanna Carolina Hendrika Storm (born van der Lith), the wife of Hans August Storm.

Hans Storm was born in Schleswig Holstein and came to South Africa in about 1875. He

applied for naturalisation at the start of the Anglo Boer War in 1899. He became a very
wealthy merchant and ironmonger, leaving an estate valued at over £52,000 when he died

aged 95 in 1948.

The house was designed in 1904 by the well- known architect Anthony M de Witt who is

credited with introducing ‘the half-timber style of building’, a Continental Renaissance

design which he used to great effect in a Swiss chalet theme for H. Storm’s home, in Upper
Quarterdeck Road, Kalk Bay.’ (Picton-Seymour: p.121.) (Figs. 3.47 & 3.48.)

It was probably built as a weekend and holiday home. The only road access was up the very
steep and rough Kimberley Road. Street directories from 1935 onwards show Hans Storm at

this house and he may well have spent part of his retirement here. His wife had died in 1932

and he inherited the property along with the adjoining erf. In 1943 Senn Hütte was sold at
public auction to the Reverend Robert Whyte for £2,300. He and his wife Jane renamed it

Beldcraig after a forest in Dumfriesshire near where Jane had come from. In 1951 Jane died,

followed in 1953 by her husband. The house, now valued at £4,000, was inherited by the
couple’s daughters Isabella and Annie. At some stage the house was renamed Corrielair - a

mountainous area of Scotland – and the house is little changed today. (Fig. 3.49.)