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I have found out little about the ‘real Arthur Gates’. Surprisingly, for his time, he seems to have

been a bit of a rolling stone – taking jobs with several different companies, including being
manager of Standard Bank in Beaufort West in 1864.

He left the bank in 1877 in Mossel Bay – perhaps he went to the diamond fields and made his

fortune. Certainly, when he died in 1912, he owned both the Kalk Bay houses and many other
properties including a 65 morgen estate called Gatesville at what was then called the Mowbray

Flats. This is the area still called Gatesville today – just off the M7 where there is Gatesville Street.

Although Arthur Gates died in Mowbray and his wife Maria in Observatory, both are buried in the
Holy Trinity graveyard in Kalk Bay.

Ponder Road

When I first heard this name I imagined it might have been called Ponder as a place one might sit
– looking out over the glorious view and, literally, pondering.

But Archives research shows that the road was named after Stanley Nathaniel Ponder, born in

London and established in Wynberg. He was noted as a feather merchant of the ‘highest quality’

in the 1908 Directory – this at a time when over £1 million worth of ostrich feathers were being
exported. Ponder was later a Councillor of the Wynberg Municipality. Like many others who

became rich and prominent in Wynberg, he started buying up plots in Kalk Bay – the first being
in 1895.

St Cross (sometimes St Croix), a seaside cottage, was on the site when Ponder bought it. It remains

the only wood-and-iron house left in this area. (Fig. 3.34).

By 1925 many people lived around Ponder Road and a campaign was started to have it properly
paved. Vivid complaints were lodged saying, among other things, how difficult it was to push a

pram up the rocky track saturated with water in the winter months. Petitions were signed.

Council were un-moved and pointed out that none of the petitioners owned properties abutting

Ponder Road. It was these property owners who would have to pay the cost estimated at £165.

Nathaniel Ponder and his neighbor Anna Cummings of Mount Pleasant strongly opposed the
scheme.