Beacon that separated Melrose, Houghton and Braamfontein saved
The historic marker was rediscovered just in time
THE 1897 HISTORIC beacon which demarcated boundaries between three farms, and which was rediscovered in 2014, has now been restored and memorialised.
Those three farms are today called Braamfontein, Melrose and Houghton.
The owners of the property on the corner of Glenhove and Oxford streets, Barrow Properties, working with their land surveyors and architects, have moved the original beacon from the pavement to a prominent spot in the gardens of the new building in Oxford Road.
The beacon now bears the signs showing the three properties – Syferfontein (now Melrose), Klipfontein (now Houghton) and Braamfontein.
Werner Kirchhoff, who lives in Melrose and is a retired professional land surveyor, was driving along Oxford Road in Rosebank in 2014 when he spotted the old beacon.
It had been buried under grass and rubble for years and had been uncovered by builders constructing the new building on the corner of Oxford and Glenhove roads.
Kirchhoff said that when he was a child he used to see the beacon from the trolley bus he rode.
Being a land surveyor, he has a trained eye for these beacons.
The beacon is an ordinary, rather grey, old round concrete block to which no one would have given a second glance while driving along busy Oxford Road.
But to the 84-year-old, it was a historical gem.
When he saw construction was starting, he quickly approached the new owners and appealed to them to save the beacon as it would have been destroyed with the widening of Oxford Road to make way for a slipway into the new building.
“The company was very receptive and embraced the idea. They have to be praised for preserving this piece of heritage,” he said.
Barrow land surveyor Stephen Shires said the company had appreciated the historic value of the beacon and decided it should be conserved as part of the new buildings.
Architect Russell Katz said the construction of the building had been “different”.
“Because the site lies in two different suburbs, Melrose and Houghton, we were to submit different plans for the two new buildings,” he said.
Also, the building facing Oxford Road had to be built at a slanted angle “overhanging” the road because the Gautrain servitude runs alongside it, he said. Barrow has also erected some steel sculptural pillars, with landscaping, marking the boundary of the two suburbs, between the two buildings.
Reminiscing about his find, Kirchhoff said that although he would see the beacon daily as a youngster, it eventually disappeared from view when a hedge grew up around it.
“I didn’t know its fate and believed it had been removed or destroyed.
“I was very excited to see it and welcome its restoration,” he said.
Kirchhoff speculated that the then-owner of Syferfontein (now Melrose), HB Marshall, would ride past it every day on his way into town and might have felt the farm beacon was not sufficient to protect his land, so he asked his brotherin-law, Johan Rissik, who was the government surveyor, to build a trigonometric beacon. That would have been in about 1895.
Marshall, who owned several properties, sold two plots between Fox and Commissioner streets to Cecil John Rhodes, to erect the gentlemen’s club now known as the Rand Club.
Kirchhoff explained that this beacon is what was called an “indicatory” beacon.
The original one was placed in the middle of Oxford Road. But when the road was built a couple of years later, the original was relocated to the pavement in the same geometrical land-surveying lines.
He said it was an important beacon, because it was from that point that the land surveyors of the time could see and plan townships.
“It is one of the highest points in the area from which property owners had a full view of their properties.”
On discovering the beacon three years ago, the pensioner immediately went to buy some white paint, and repainted it, saying these beacons were all painted white at the turn of the century.
Kirchhoff ’s family is well entrenched in South African history. His father, Peter, was an artist who was one of the sculptors of the friezes at the Voortrekker Monument. In fact, he and his family are clearly portrayed in the friezes.
Syferfontein was developed by Marshall into the suburb of Melrose; and Klipfontein, owned by mining magnate Barney Barnato’s company, JCI, became the suburb of Houghton.