GEORGE
BULLOUGH WORLD TOUR 1892-1895
Wood-block prints from Album IX -
CAPE TOWN
Written from first-hand, on-site research and illustrated from his personal photographic archive by George W. Randall, co-founder in July 1996 and former Vice Chairman Kinloch Castle Friends’ Association.
Time of George Bullough’s visit to Cape Town, South Africa July / August 1893.
In September 1892 twenty-two year old George Bullough (later Sir George, Baronet of Rum) embarked on a thirty-five month long world tour. In July/August 1893 he made his first of two visits to South Africa when he spent several weeks in Cape Town.
His second visit was in September/October 1893 when he visited the “diamond city of Kimberley” and the “gold city of Johannesburg” – see separate post on my Art Treasures of Kinloch Castle blog.
This late Victorian world he captured in photographs and prints he later mounted in twenty leather albums today in the library at Kinloch Castle, his Highland home.
THE TWENTY WORLD TOUR PHOTOGRAPH ALBUMS 14½ x 10¾ inches.
I Ceylon/India; II Ceylon/India; III India; IV India; V India; VI India/Burma;
VIII Australia; VIII Cape Town; IX South Africa; X South Africa/Madeira/Hobart;
XI Tasmania/New Zealand; XII New Zealand; XIII Natives: Africa/New Zealand;
XIV Japan; XV Numea/Batavia/Singapore; XVI China; XVII China/Japan;
XVIII New Zealand/New Caledonia; XIX Honolulu/California;
XX Salt Lake City.
Houts Bay, twelve miles south of Cape Town on the Atlantic seaboard, refers to the horse-shoe shaped bay, the coastal town or the whole valley in which the town is situated. When the Dutch colonised Table Bay in 1652 their immediate need was timber.
Located in a valley facing the Atlantic Ocean Hout(s) Bay, (in Afrikaans Houtbaaitjen meaning “Wood Bay”), was named by the Dutch navigator and colonial administrator Johan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck in 1652. Due to low rainfall there were no large forests in the vicinity of Table Bay to provide the necessary timber for construction and ship building by the first colonists. The solution was found in a wet valley twelve miles south-south-west of Cape Town bordering Hout Bay. In 1668 a road link was completed and permits were granted to cut and saw timber from the Houts Bay forests, woodland van Riebeeck described “as being the best in the world.”
Adderley Street, originally named Heerengracht after the canal which ran down the centre, was for many years a residential street lined with large houses and oak trees.
As a major thoroughfare through Cape Town by the mid-1800’s, it increasingly became commercial. In 1850, influential merchant and mayor, Hercules Cross Jarvis, 1803-1889, re-named it Adderley Street in honour of the British Parliamentarian and President of the Board of Health, Charles Bowyer Adderley, 1814-1905.
Elevated to the peerage in 1878 as Baron Norton, he fought successfully against the plan for the British government to make Cape Town into another penal colony.
Greenmarket Square has a history dating back to 1696 when a Rococo Style burgher or watch house was built, the appointed burgher being the official representative of the borough responsible for security.
The square subsequently served as a slave market, vegetable market before becoming the administrative and social centre of the town. Today it is pedestrianised, stalls selling a vast range of goods including antiques and African curios. The watch house was demolished sixty-five years later (1761) and the Old Town House built on the site where it also served as the city hall. (See Image 20 wood block print.)
By
1845 almost all the single-storied buildings round the square had been replaced
and in 1879 the Central Metropolitan Church was built to the right of the Old
Town House. Today the Old Town House remains, at the very hub of Cape Town,
where it houses the Michaelis Collection donated by Sir Max Michaelis in 1914
consisting renowned examples of Netherlandish Art from the 17th
century.
Further enlarged by 1751 records show it was used as a summer residence of the Governor becoming known as The Governor’s House by 1790.
Following British occupation in 1806 the decorative façade of the Dutch period were concealed and replaced to that of the Georgian period. The first Governor of the Cape of Good Hope was the Irish Peer, Du Pre Alexander, 2nd Earl of Caledon. He was succeeded in 1811 by fifty-one year old General John Francis Craddock, 1st Baron Howden. Howden resigned in 1814 to be succeeded by General Lord Charles Henry Somerset, son of the 6th Duke of Beaufort.
E. Burmester, Burmester’s Buildings, Adderley Street, Cape Town. Manufacturing Jeweller, Watchmaker, and Optician. Importer of English, French, and German Goods.
Best Gold and Silver Jewellery. Silver Cups, Spoons and Forks. Table Cutlery and Silver Plated-ware. English, German, and Waltham Watches. Nickel Silver and Electro-plated Spoons and Forks. Telescopes, Opera Glasses, Microscopes. Surveyor’s Instruments. Photographic Material’s and Chemicals. Albums, Purses, and Jet Goods. Spectacles and Eyeglasses.
Agent for the Celebrated Berlin Reading Table, and Hanging Lamps (with Round Burners), which received the God Medal at the Exhibition.
Watches, Clocks, and Jewellery Repaired on the Premises.
From Invoice Head 1881.
The business of E. BURMESTER was run by Ludwig Karl Emil Burmester, only son of Johann Christian and Caroline Burmester. Born in Brunswick, Lower Saxony, Germany on the 22nd of September 1832, Emil “was a naturalised British citizen.” Having moved to Cape Town around his thirtieth year, in 1864 Emil established his business at 23 Adderley Street, Cape Town’s main shopping street with “around one hundred and fifty retail shops.” As business grew it became necessary to move to larger premises. Records indicate E. Burmester at 58 and 86 – 92 Addereley Street. By 1901 it “was housed in a splendidly refurbished building at 86 Adderley Street”, by Appointment to His Excellency the Governor, Sir Walter Francis Hely-Hutchinson.
On the 26th of April 1868, by special licence in the
Matrimonial Court, he married twenty-four year old Karoline Agnes Augusta Eyserbech,
they had six children; Emil Wells, Alice Eveline, Alfred William, Daisy Maude,
Albert Victor and Arthur Phillipp,
In his seventies Emil retired with his wife to Thȕn,
near Bern, Switzerland. Agnes Burmeester died on the 28th of February 1919 and her husband on the 29th of
October 1919, aged eighty-seven.
William Duncan & Co. was a drapery and household goods business adjacent to jewelers E. Burmester, Adderley Street, Cape Town. I have been unable to discover any early information relating to Mr. Duncan or the establishment of his imposing store. It is possible he was born in Dundee, Scotland, where his uncle was a jute manufacturer.
Having arrived in Cape Town he set up business in household wares, the shop signage listing “Carpets and Floor Cloth” in its showrooms. In 1886 William Duncan was joined by his nephew, eighteen year old William Duncan Baxter who took over the business nine years later when his uncle died in 1895.
Nephew William Duncan Baxter was a successful businessman,
serving as president of the Association of Chambers of Commerce from 1916 to
1918. As a politician he showed great interest in political and civic affairs
being elected member of the Cape Town City Council in 1904 and Mayor of Cape
Town in 1907.
The following year he was a member of the lower
house of the Cape Parliament and from 1910 to 1920 a member of the Union House
of Assembly.
Baxter married twenty-two year old Ethel Jagger, eldest daughter of prominent Cape Town businessman John William Jagger in 1911.
They had six children, two sons
and four daughters.
TABLE MOUNTAIN. Original full size: 3¾ x 2 inches. (Devil's Peak to right.)
Original full size: 3¾ x 2 inches.
Methodism came to
South Africa in 1855 when British soldiers were first stationed at Cape Colony.
The foundation stone for the Wesleyan Church was laid in 1876 on a site purchased the previous year for £1,850. Completed in 1879 at a cost of £17,700 by the building company T.I.C. Inglesby under the supervision of the architect Charles Freeman. The church, which opened on the 12th of November, is deemed “a masterpiece of high Victorian Gothic Revival architecture”.
Today the basilica type church, with the lean-to roof of the aisles broken by a series of ten gabled transverse roofs is the second-oldest remaining building facing Greenmarket Square.
The tower houses a massive bell weighing three and a half tons. Today known as the “Silent Bell”, it was last rung in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee when it shook the foundation stones of the Church and surrounding buildings for the last time.
The architect, Charles Freeman was born in the village of Prestbury, Gloucestershire, England in 1833. He served a four year apprenticeship with architect and builder George Clarke at Wotton Haven, near Warwick, after which he supervised the erection of St. Mark’s Church, Cheltenham, consecrated in February 1862 at a cost of £3,540, architect John Middleton. In 1863 he was recruited by the architectural department of the Natal Government and emigrated to South Africa. In 1872 he moved to Cape Town. Despite his initial plans to build the Houses of Parliament being flawed he went on to establish his own highly successful private practice. Other famous buildings he designed include the Standard Bank Building (1880) in Addersley Street and the five star Grand Hotel commissioned by the Union Steamship Company in 1894. Charles Freeman died in 1911.
Reference: “History of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of South Africa” by Rev. J. Whiteside published 1906
Album IX - Page 21 - Original size of each: 3¾ x 2 inches. Clockwise from Upper Left: 
Thirteen years in the building the Fort was constructed by the Dutch East India Company between 1666 and 1679 and remains the oldest colonial building in South Africa.
Wynberg camp was founded in 1804
following a report by an appointed commission to find a suitable location for a
military base. Because of its strategic position De oude Wynberg, the farm of
leading British colonist Alexander Tennant, (born in Ochiltree, Ayrshire,
Scotland in 1772) was chosen. In March 1809 Tennant sold 78 morgen (48 acres) to
the Cape Government. A further 54 morgen (thirty-three acres) were purchased in
June 1886 by the British Secretary for War, Henry Campbell-Bannerman. In
December 1921 the remaining “land, property and buildings” were transferred to
the Government of the Union of South Africa.
END OF POST - 1 MAY 2021
Reviewed by author 2 November 2022
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