Page 21 - Bulletin 15 2011

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side rather than the passing sea trade. He did well, and in 1845 was asked to be the fifth

signatory to the founding document of the S.A. Mutual Life Assurance Society (Old Mutual),
which was in the process of being established by another prominent Scot, John Fairbairn.

(Fig. 1.20.)

Captain George and Jane Findlay had a family of seven, four of whom were ultimately to live
in homes in St. James. George James Findlay, (Fig. 1.21), their second son was born in

London in 1831 and grew up in Cape Town. With his cousin, John Henry Durham, he sailed

back to England in 1856 and established a buying agency for his father’s firm in London that
became known as Findlay, Durham and Brodie, a company still operating today. In 1862

George James went to Canada for business and health reasons and during this time set up a
salmon canning plant on Vancouver Island. After twelve years he returned to England and

made a fortune, holding a virtual monopoly on tinned salmon sold in that country. On a return
visit to Cape Town in 1885, George James, seeing the potential of the False Bay coastline, as

the railway had reached Kalk Bay two years before, bought a property on the corner of Main

Road and Hillrise Road, St James that he named ‘Vancouver House’. (Fig. 1.22.) The house
was later altered extensively and is today ‘St. James Manor’, 108 Main Road. (Fig. 1.23.)

This was the first purchase of a property by the Findlay family in St. James. In 1887 George

James then bought ‘Villa Capri’, today 86 Main Road, a house that had been built as a
whaling station some seventy years before. George James married Margaret Barr in England,

had two sons and a daughter and died there in 1897.

Captain George’s eldest daughter, Isabella Findlay, born in 1832, married James Hoole and
one of their two daughters married D’Urban Godlonton, a founding partner of the legal

practice Syfret, Godlonton, Fuller Moore Inc. In 1886 Isabella bought a plot at 36 Main Road,

St. James and fifteen years later built on it a house that took its name from the rock formation
in the sea opposite, Stonehenge. (Fig. 1.24.) Sadly, she was only able to live in the house for

two years before she died. Isabella’s grand-daughter, Isabel, married Nicolaas Louw, the
owner of the farm ‘Steenberg’, and the couple had three children. After World War II the

family lived in the home ‘Heigh-O’, 4 Sorrento Road, St. James.