Page 154 - Bulletin 21

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Fishermen’s ‘Cottages’

Most of Die Land was sold from the Wicht estate in 1892 and by 1896 the van Blerk brothers

owned most of it. The exceptions were the Fernandez, Menigo and Vercuil houses and what
were to become the Fishermen’s Union houses. By the time the project to build the Flats was

complete and the School built (1945), nearly all of the buildings on Die Lan occupied by
fishermen had been demolished.

There are several van Blerk building plans at the Archives. In some cases it is impossible to

tell where the buildings went up as no roads were named. (Fig. 4.38) Such is the case of the
plan for a wood and iron house passed in 1898 for Gerhard van Blerk. It looks similar to a

‘cottage’ that probably stood towards Clairvaux Road. (Fig. 4.39.)

The plans for the row of pitched roof houses that appear in photographs along Harbour Road

were not found but it can be safely assumed they were built by Jan van Blerk in about 1900.

(Fig. 4.40.) In 1904 he crammed more cottages on to the land behind when plans for ‘12
cottages of wood and iron’ were passed on a site ‘on the Sand Block above the Police

Station’. Nine cottages were built. (Fig. 4.41.) To call them ‘cottages’ was something of an
exaggeration – they were small as can be seen – 33.5 sq m with the bedroom 7.5 sq m – and

were built as cheaply as possible: iron roof, walls of ‘deals lined with ceiling board’. They

were built only 15 inches off the sandy ground, had no foundations but rested on tarred 9” x
9” pitch pine. They had cold water and an Earth Closet. The plans were passed it seems

without question. It may have been the considerable influence of the van Blerks in the area,
or simply seen as a quick fix to the critical housing shortage.

These properties (erf 89939) passed into the hands of Albert Leopold Wolfsohn (see below)

in 1920 and strangely were not declared to be slums in 1936. In 1938 when the general land
acquisition for the Flats took place the Council, in overseeing the process, expressed surprise

that these very crowded wood and iron houses had not been declared slums. At that time as
many as 14 people were living in a ‘cottage’ of just 33.5 sq m.

The big double storey building in Fig. 4.41 left of centre is the well-known Wolfsohn shop

(see below). It was originally owned by Jan van Blerk and it is believed that the plan shows