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swimming bath alone was £85,000. But before that could be commenced an effective sea

wall had to be constructed, and on 30 May 1939 Murray and Stewart’s tender of £13,865
was accepted. Mr F M Glennie was the appointed architect. Progress with the whole

scheme was interrupted by the war and it was completed only in mid-1957.

The Marine Promenade

The idea of a Marine Promenade running on reclaimed land behind a substantial sea wall

may have had a number of origins. Sea walls had been constructed in various parts of the
beach zone since 1890 to protect the railway line that opened in 1892, and both drew

much opposition and criticism. After the railway’s demise, the last train journey taking

place on 16 April 1929, the SAR & H transferred the land (the permanent way), buildings
and infrastructure to the Council with the understanding that the land was never to be

built on. This guaranteed that Beach Road would remain the limit of the building line and
that there would always be an open corridor of land between Beach Road and the sea, as

is there is today. Within three months all evidence of the railway had been demolished
and removed – except for the sea wall.

The practice of building sea walls had involved not only the rail company. The old Green
and Sea Point Municipality, when faced the problem of disposing of their refuse, tipped it

into the sea near the end of St. James Road. But the waves and currents simply carried it
100 m away onto Rocklands Beach which was in the City Council area, causing

unhappiness between the two Councils. Dumping on the Cape Flats was suggested but
the transport costs were prohibitive. So in 1907 the GP-SP Municipality decided to build

a sea wall to protect the dump from wave action and then reclaim the land behind it by

building up layer upon layer. After municipal amalgamation in 1913 this practice
continued and in 1920 the Council was able to layout 3 tennis courts, 2 croquet lawns, a

bowling green and junior football field on the newly created land at Rocklands.

Throughout the 1920s and 30s there were moneys on the Council’s annual budget for the
construction of sea walls, and in some places redundant sections of railway wall were