Page 101 - Bulletin 22 2019

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iron box there. Mrs CD Cloete of Alphen Farm, and owner of local house Toevlugt, owned a

box there briefly between 1926 - 30 before she moved it to Muizenberg. So there were
perhaps only ever two there. The Council investigation of 1928 had suggested the possibility

of erecting 11 concrete ones, but this never happened.

Fish Hoek

There were few significant resorts south of Kalk Bay for a long time, and certainly no

facilities at Fish Hoek until well into the 1920s, although the railway had arrived 30 years
earlier in 1890. The reason was that the area comprised two large farms (Visch Hoek and

Kleintuin) that occupied the False Bay end of the valley from Fish Hoek to Clovelly. These

were subdivided into plots and put on the market only in 1918-1920. Until that time holiday-
makers had camped in the area with the permission of the de Villiers family.

Like Muizenberg, Fish Hoek had a safe bathing beach that was equally exposed to gale-force

south-easters and the problem of wind-blown sand, but it had the advantage of longer hours
of sunshine. (Fig. 2.84.)

A Village Management Board was formed in 1927 and provision of public amenities
followed thereafter. These included a tea-room on stilts called the Pavilion. The first 6

bathing boxes were erected in 1929. In 1931 the VMB opted for concrete ones manufactured
by Knap Concrete Industries of Main Road, Lakeside. (Knap had tried, unsuccessfully, to

interest the City Council in their product back in 1932.) They sat on concrete slab
foundations and had walls of brick or concrete blocks plastered in a weatherboard pattern,

under double-pitched roofs. They were sited well back from the HWM landward of a line of

jarrah rail-sleepers.

Eventually three rows developed which plans and aerial photos show numbered 15 in 1935,

26 in 1945, increasing to 66 in 1949. This appears to have been the maximum number built
and to have remained constant for the next 30 years. In 1949 the FH Council decided that all

remaining sites would be restricted to local residents, but this was later relaxed. In 1949 a
letter announcing new lease arrangements was sent to 42 local residents. Perhaps the other 24

boxes were for day rentals? (Figs. 2.85 – 2.88.)