Page 5 - Bulletin 18 2014

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However, in 1903 William left the family home in Wynberg and returned temporarily to

Cornwall with his family to help his uncle with a very big project of terrace houses in
Porthleven. This was known as Delbridge Row at one time. (Fig. 1.1.)

Arrival in South Africa

Mossel Bay was a substantial settlement with a busy port serving a large hinterland extending

to the Oudtshoorn district and wider Little Karoo where the ostrich industry was booming. It

was in Mossel Bay that the brothers, arriving with little but their skills and a will to succeed,
established themselves. The shipping register shows that John arrived among a job lot of

workers being imported because of the rapid development taking place in South Africa at this

time.

Forming a partnership with one John Courtney, the brothers set about making a name for
themselves as skilled masons and building contractors. While the focus of this paper is on the

Kalk Bay – Muizenberg area, it is instructive to look at major projects and contracts that the
brothers were involved in over the years before they moved to Cape Town.

The Uniondale Dutch Reformed Church was completed by William Delbridge in 1883. (Fig.
1.2.) He had gone back to Cornwall in 1881 to marry Jane Bawden and the couple sailed back

to Mossel Bay before traveling by wagon through the Langkloof to Uniondale. What Jane
thought of this strange and wild land is unrecorded but their first child was born in the back

of an ox wagon at Uniondale in 1882.

There were other contracts for the DRC over the years where the Delbridges demonstrated

their masonry skills and their reputations as contractors building the Pastorie at Oudtshoorn
(1881), and churches at Sutherland (1899), and Laingsburg (1904). (Fig. 1.3.)

It seems that the Delbridge brothers could turn their hand to any form of building or
contracting work. Two early water schemes were successfully completed and this experience

stood them in good stead when they eventually moved to Wynberg.