Peep into city’s oldest house
CIRCA 1852: SIMPLE HOME BUILT OVER A CENTURY AGO
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week she’s in the oldest house in Johannesburg.
‘Just ask an estate agent,” smiles Isabella Pingle, who’s also from Kensington Heritage, when I blurt about who would have known where Joburg’s oldest house really is!
Bezuidenhout Park is not exactly in the guide books.
The first farmhouse Bezuidenhout was built by his wife’s parents in 1852 before the gold rush as a simple little rectangular structure on the massive farm Doornfontein.
Heather (my photographer) and I meet Isabella at the grander, gabled Cosmos House, built in 1903 by that first FJ Bezuidenhout’s son Barend.
It’s now a very renovated clubhouse for the Flower Foundation’s Kensington retirement village. Johannesburg author Mike Alfred shows us around and provides relevant heritage clues he’s compiled.
Of many habitats constructed round here, long before Johannesburg or any foreign settlers, none have survived.
Heritage and homes were routed and abandoned during the mayhem of the Difaqane, when warring Shaka Zulu armies rampaged across the country, displacing and scattering local people. Mzilikazi just magnified the social and historical chaos in these parts.
When trekboers arrived a little after, it was not untrue about finding large tracts unoccupied.
We look around Bezuidenhout Park, better known for its neglect, and find it has been tamed for Parkruns.
The security guy arranges with Isabella that we go in at the gate to see the houses. I think some of his family are living in the original one.
Alongside the 1852 house is a second, larger, built in 1863 when the family outgrew the first. The early house was then used as a buitenhuis or extra cottage.
The second home, incidentally Joburg’s third-oldest house, has been modified over time and is used by the Rotary.
I’m more interested in the house that’s the first in Johannesburg. Kids play with a trolley in front and a woman in a red coat is sitting on Joburg’s oldest stoep. She tells me the fruit and vegetables she is growing are Mozambican.
We leave for the desecrated cemetery, sold on parkland by Barend Bezuidenhout on condition of maintenance. An angel off the entrance arch still looks hopeful.
Isabella feels the original house should be restored, turned into something like a gift shop. I wonder about it as we return. Small and humble as Johannesburg’s first house may be, I somehow like that it has become a home again.