Page 114 - Bulletin 22

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HARRIS AND MAIN ROADS KALK BAY –

A SOCIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

Steve Herbert

Introduction

In some ways the area of Kalk Bay along the Main Road, from Clairvaux Road to the Bible

Institute, with Harris Road behind, seemed to develop on its own. It was separated by Harbour

Road from the fishing community who came to crowd on to the land behind it, and from the rest
of Kalk Bay by the sandy waste of the Outspan and what later became Clairvaux Road.

It was part of the enormous grant that encompassed Ladan and Harbour Roads and the area
known as Die Land – home to the fishing community.

The grant was to Henry Barnard in 1809 who motivated his application to the Governor by

stating that the land was ‘fit to produce corn but was now in a perfectly wild state’. This was

something of an exaggeration given that the area was known for years as the Sandblocks. It
passed through various owners before being bought by the Trustees of the Cape of Good Hope

Fishing Whaling and Sealing Company in 1848. The total area was about 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres)
and it was to be many years before any formal houses were built here. Die Land was bought by

Johan Coenraad Wicht in 1851 by which time only two small erven had been sold. When he died
in 1878 it was subdivided and most of it was sold only forty years later, in 1892. It was shortly

after this that a boom in sales and building started on Main and Harris Roads.

Along the Main Road there was Crown Land from Clairvaux Road to the future Essex Road.

Past Essex Road as far as the present Bible Institute the land was granted to Johan Andreas
Heyse Wicht in 1855. The development of this strip is the subject of this paper. (Figs. 3.1 & 3.2.)

The last surviving whale bone marker in Kalk Bay stands at the end of Harris Road and is clearly
shown on the c. 1940 City of Cape Town survey. It is likely to have been erected when the land

was originally granted. (Figs. 3.3 & 3.4.)