Page 143 - Bulletin 22 2019

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in Scotland with documents having to pass back and forth between Cape Town and the UK by

mail boat.

John Harris bought Kenilworth Villa which he rented out. He didn’t enjoy this income for long as

he was hit by a car driven by a Dr Anderson in Sea Point in June 1914 and died at the Somerset

Hospital on 24 June aged 72. He was a widower with no children and once again there was no
Will so there was a long delay while various relatives in Scotland signed papers and inherited

their share of the estate that was finally wound up in 1917.

Harris Road has a distinct character made from a number of elements: pedestrian pathway
bordered by a strip of garden on the sea-side and continuous dressed stone boundary walls with

moulded cement coping and wrought-iron fencing on the mountain-side; similar single-storey
hipped roof houses with similar set backs from the pathway. As it turns at Clairvaux Road, the

pathway widens out to form a ‘balcony’ overlooking the harbour and junction of Main Road –
Clairvaux Road – Outspan. (Fig. 3.36.)

Individual Houses of Harris Road

Harris Road was a place of long-time residents who came from a variety of backgrounds. Some
of them are described below.

Braemar Villa, 6 Harris Rd, Erf 89965; bought from the James Harris Estate in 1911 for £450.

Johan Herman Dempers was a JP and had been a Member of the Legislative Assembly. He was

an attorney and notary in the law firm Dempers & van Ryneveldt. Perhaps typical of the wealthy
investors who saw opportunity in the area, by 1924 he and van Ryneveldt owned 7 properties in

Muizenberg and St James. Figs. 3.37 – 3.39.)