Page 48 - KBHA BULLETIN 6

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A Preliminary Archaeological Assessment of the Point's Cultural Heritage

Antonia Malan

Introduction

The Archaeology Contracts Office of the University of Cape Town was commissioned by

Jessica Hughes of AfriDev Consultants to conduct a Phase One Heritage Impact Assessment

of Kalk Bay Point as part of an "environmental scan" of the area. The site comprises the areas
adjacent to the harbour that were associated with the colonial period fishing industry and a

privately owned house and outbuildings (erven 90005 and 90016). (Fig. 2.2). Though our

report was confined to a preliminary and superficial survey of a small area, and was largely
the result of compiling the fruits of other people’s research, it is hopefully a contribution

towards the overall archive of Kalk Bay.

Although this portion of land is relatively undeveloped at present, the general area has a long
history dating from prehistoric times through the early colonial history of the Cape, and

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including the 20 century development of Kalk Bay harbour as we know it today. Our
expertise was required to investigate the historical processes that had taken place on the Point
that may have left remains in the ground, to ascertain their relative significance, and to assess

whether and where physical traces still exist that might be affected by future developments.
We were also asked by the Kalk Bay Historical Association to confirm that the remains of a

building overlooking the sea were those of "Patmos", Reverend Murray’s seaside retreat, and
if the "old ruin" marked on an old harbour development plan (Fig. 2.8) was likely to have

survived.

As well as carrying out a site inspection and a basic archival survey we had the advantage of

being able to tap into excellent publications and people’s extensive private collections of
information about Kalk Bay. Many of these sources have been used before in the pages of the

KBHA Bulletins, but an archaeologist perhaps views them from a slightly different

perspective. We tend to treat all sources of information as artefacts – fragmentary records of

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