Wilderness village 100 years old
Hugo Leggatt, Wilderness
In the winter weeks leading up to the middle of July 1921, the then George & Knysna Herald carried advertisements for the coming auction of The Wilderness Resort on 21 July.
The property had originally been bought in 1877 by Mr and Mrs George Bennett who named it The Wilderness and started farming there. After George Bennett’s premature death, the property was managed by George Bennett’s relatives until it was bought by Montagu White in 1903.
White foresaw the coming importance of the motor car and built the access road named after himself: White’s Road. Farming activities were reduced, while the old buildings were extended and became a guest house. Although nominally owned by The Wilderness Estate Company, the only shareholder of significance was White.
Montagu White lived in his late father’s house, Fancourt, and it was there that he died in a tragic mushroom poisoning episode in 1916. In the ensuing years the company went into liquidation and the property was put up for auction. The property was auctioned in three parts: the residential hotel of about 4,5ha; the remaining extent of about 350ha which stretched from Kaaimans River eastwards; and a third part consisting of plots laid out by the old company but which were as yet unsold. The hotel was bought by a Mrs Ferguson of Johannesburg who ran it with hands-on efficiency for the next seven years until she sold it in 1928 to the original buyers of the remaining extent in 1921.
These buyers were the members of a syndicate which formed a new company,
The Wilderness (1921) Ltd - the most significant members being Mr and Mrs Jack Raubenheimer and Owen Grant. In the mid-1930s the company was reorganised with Grant as the sole shareholder, until he was bought out by Dr Krynauw in the late 1950s.
The Wilderness of 1921 was a very different spot to the one of today. In particular, there were no bridges across the river mouth. Walking from the hotel across the open space variously known over the years as the Park, the Village Green or the Common, brought one directly to the beach sands, where now there are the flat grasslands, fenced by SANParks.
Access to Wilderness from the outside world was down White’s Road, which led off the winding gravel road, Knysna Road (now the Seven Passes Road). It was a secluded spot in those days.
Unfortunately, Covid-19 has made it difficult to appropriately celebrate the hundred years of history initiated in July 1921.
(Hugo Leggatt is a local historian.Ed)