Page 116 - KBHA Bulletin 16

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Woodstock Beach

Woodstock was named after a market town in Oxfordshire and had an illustrious history.

In 1806 the Dutch Capitulation to the British after the Battle of Blouberg was signed
there under the Treaty Tree. For a long time it comprised farmland and large estates (eg.

Roodebloem) and the local community had unhindered access to the mountain slopes
above (where dairy herds grazed and paths led to the old fortifications on the ridgelines:

King’s, Queen’s and Prince of Wales blockhouses) and the beach below, every bit as

good as Muizenberg, from which whaling, trek fishing and line-fishing took place. There
were well-known hotels such as the Lord Milner and the Sanatorium Hotel on the beach.

There was also a Beach Road that is still there. By the turn of the century, with a

population of some 29,000 in 1904, it was the third largest municipality in South Africa,
after Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and was the growing industrial area of Cape Town.

The beach has always been infamous as a lee-shore upon which countless vessels small

and large have been wrecked, and hundreds of lives and cargoes worth a fortune lost from
th
the 1500s until quite recently. In the 19 century it was described as a “capital beach” –
broad, clean and safe. It was the nearest one to the centre of town and was therefore well

patronised, and also the only one that provided bathers with orthodox accommodation in
the form of bathing machines which could be hired on the European system at a nominal

charge. (Dennis Edwards, 1897.) (Fig. 3.27.)

In July 1910, at the same time that the City Council were considering their Pier, a
deputation of Woodstock ratepayers waited upon their Mayor and Town Clerk to request

that a meeting of ratepayers be convened to sanction the transfer of £3000, originally

voted for public wash-houses, to the construction of a pier and beach improvements. A
sketch of the pier appeared in the press. (Fig. 3.28.). One ratepayer was quick to respond

in a letter to the Editor of the Cape Times in which he pointed out that £3,000 was

insufficient to build a structure substantial enough to withstand storms, and that the
money would be better spent on sanitation. Perhaps for this reason nothing transpired.