Page 31 - KBHA Bulletin 16

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Because there is so much material we deal here mainly with the period from roughly

the 1890s until about 1940. There are many people who will have their own memories
of Windsor Road and it is of course a continuing story. Apart from anything else there

cannot be any other street in South Africa that at one time or another has been home
to three Springboks. These were Cyril Hammond, badminton, Doug Hopwood the

rugby eighthman, and Vincent Cloete the rugby player, honoured recently as one of
the “Forgotten Springboks”. I’m told that Jack Cheetham, the cricketer, used to

holiday in Windsor Road at one time. And we shouldn’t forget another great athlete

who lived in Windsor Road: Peggy Duncan was a long distance swimmer – the first
woman to swim to Robben Island and the first South African to swim the English

Channel.

Because of the complexity surrounding individual building records, and the buying

and selling of properties, this paper is structured around the families who owned
property in Windsor Road during this period. The names of Fish, Pratten, Delbridge,

Goles, and Kalan are still in our collective memories, but there are others who had a
major impact on the street and whose names are unknown to people in Kalk Bay

today.

Origins

The 1848 erf plan (Fig. 2.1.) is the earliest one showing the future Windsor Road laid

out. In 1848 it did not have a name and the lots shown would later be consolidated

and carved up in various ways as the area developed. It is interesting to see the
Outspan was a lot bigger in 1848. As Kalk Bay and Simons Town developed, more

and more wagons were coming and going. The diagonal road shown next to the
Outspan was designed to allow wagon access to the Outspan without congesting the

Main Road. Slices of this strip of road passed into private ownership many years later.

Today part of this road runs between Windsor House and the Olympia Café. Its
existence at all is commemorated in the slightly strange diagonal face on the north

side of the Olympia Building.

By 1904 development was beginning to spread up King’s (Windsor) Road as is shown
graphically in the 1904 Electric Light Scheme map (Fig. 2.2) and table below.