Page 41 - KBHA BULLETIN 5

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Engineer, had stated in a letter of 26 July 1922, to the Council’s Improvements and Parks

Committee, that the road was “……necessary for the future development of the mountain slopes,
above Muizenberg and Kalk Bay, on proper Town Planning lines ….” He attached a plan

showing the proposed route and the affected properties. This may have been the Attridge map of
1915.

Initial work had been commenced on a small scale in November 1922 from the Muizenberg end,

between an old quarry on Main Road and the back of the Municipal Stables that had been

established there in 1913, and below the balancing reservoir that received water from the Hansen
(Silvermine) Reservoir. We may surmise that there had been some sort of track leading up to this

reservoir from the time of its construction around 1900, and that this had remained in passable
condition for maintenance and inspection purposes. We may also surmise that it made sense to

start the HLR here because this was Council land and did therefore not require costly
expropriation procedures.

A work force of 60 men had been assembled funded from the Provincial Administration’s post-
war Relief Works Programme. An initial grant of £400 was made available and by March 1923 a

40 ft wide carriageway 1,150 ft long had been cut. The embankment was planted with sour fig as
a stabilization measure, and a further £478 had been granted for the next six month phase of

work through to November 1923. (Fig. 3.11.)

This was the state of progress when Boyes had intervened.

The whereabouts of the files containing subsequent correspondence and plans describing the

engineering and technical details of construction, as well as the general progression of
construction, have yet to be traced. However, cross-sectional drawings for the later southward

extension around Trappies Kop, indicate how it was intended to engineer the 33 ft wide roadbed
0
0
into a variety of typical slope conditions ranging from 25 to 40 (Fig. 3.12.) Also, it is known
that there were washaways in places during the wet season and that, for these and other reasons,
construction took about five years rather than the expected two years. It is also not clear precisely

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