A tram ride described in an old Cape Town guide as being “without doubt the most beautiful in the world”, the trams brought all the peninsula to Camps Bay to turn it into the region’s favourite holiday resort. The construction was authorized by special Act of Parliament passed on 20 October 1899. The Camps Bay [...]
Maps and aerial photographs of Camps Bay from as early as 1909 to the present year are available at incredibly low cost (as little as R12) from the National Geo-spatial offices and centre in Mowbray. The helpful friendly staff will even customorize your map or photo. Part of the Dept of Rural Development & Land [...]
Acknowledged as the first farmhouse in Camps Bay, Ravensteyn was built by Johan Lodewyk Wernich, a merchant who first came to the Cape in 1729 as a soldier. His son Johan Jan Lodewyk Wernich had three wives, the third of which was Anna Catharina Koekemoer. After the death of her husband she was a desirable [...]
Known as the father of Camps Bay, James Riddell Farquhar dominated the area in the early nineteen hundreds and was recognized as its unofficial mayor. Born in Aberdeen in 1865, he emigrated to South Africa at the age of 24. In King William’s Town he met the town clerk Samuel Scott, becoming first his assistant [...]
Camps Bay almost became the scene of another South African diamond rush. Instead of the block of flats on the sea front called Sonnekus we might have had a Kimberley look-alike Big Hole (perhaps an improvement?). The street name The Fairway is all that remains of an ill starred 9 hole golf course opened with [...]
Gold or Bones Is There Anything Left to Find? Not for nothing is this part of South Africa known as the Cape of Storms with the Western coast of our fair country littered with wrecks. Two of interest to Camps Bay are mentioned in the book Forgotten Shipwrecks of the Western Cape by Michael Walker. [...]
Large schools of sharks close inshore, many up to 25 feet (8 metres) long were reported in the Cape Argus of 8 January 1946. Pictured on the front page of the paper was Clifton resident Mr Court A Smorenburg, beach superintendent, shooting at a large school of Blue Pointer/Great White man eaters from the rocks [...]
On the corner of Victoria Drive and Van Kampz Street stand the building which at one time was the Camps Bay pharmacy of Mr Phillip Isaacs. According to the Guinness Book of Records, he became the oldest practicing pharmacist in the world, when he was 96 years old he was still serving, having been at [...]
Fond memories of Philly are held by some of the area’s older residents. He was a large white horse rescued in 1932 from a Hout Bay farm. He was able to wander freely through Camps Bay village because the area was so undeveloped – health inspectors from the Council appeared not to notice his illegal [...]
Built on Camps Bay Drive around 1907, these cottages were originally homes of drivers of the trams which ran from Cape Town and Sea Point to Camps Bay from 1901 to 1930. Of the seven cottages, three are of stone construction, four of brick. Any structure over 60 years old is subject to restrictions on [...]