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Overview

Neil Fraser, executive director of the Central Johannesburg Partnership and a JDA board member, writes a regular column on urban renewal and regeneration for the City of Johannesburg's website. In a column on Jeppestown, he sketches the history of the area. Here is an extract:

Jeppestown was founded by CEG Julius Jeppe, who had moved from Pretoria to Johannesburg in 1886. The Ford and Jeppe Estate Company was established by Julius Jeppe Snr together with his son, Sir Julius Jeppe, and their partner LP Ford. An 1894 description of the suburb says it comprised "421 buildings, two churches, a Masonic temple, St Mary's Collegiate for Girls and a library", adding that "there were even rumours of electric light for each house".

By 1896 there were 5 647 people living in Jeppestown which, in 1897 was described as "the most ambitious and the best area" among the "neat little suburbs on the outskirts of the town proper".

I'm not sure how accurate that description is as the area was acknowledged as a "mixed area in terms of social class, Jeppe essentially forming part of the mining perimeter of old-established white working-class districts". Clive M Chipkin (Johannesburg Style) quotes an 1897 description of the inner city suburbs of those times as "rural Booysens in the south, grimy Fordsburg in the west, patrician Doornfontein on the northeast and domesticated Jeppe 'for the man of limited purse' in the southeast".

In 1890, St Michael's School for Boys was opened and was the forerunner of the well-known Jeppe High School for Boys. St Mary's School for Girls was subsequently established and charged 12s 6d a month for high school classes, 7s 6d, for middle and 5s 6d for lower.

The Julius Jeppe Oval existed initially as an open piece of land formalised into a park in about 1890 and still boasts the first commemorative monument erected in Johannesburg to the memory of Julius Jeppe. In 1938 Bertha Solomon, MP for Jeppe, started a soup kitchen for the poor which she operated for 20 years and which developed into the current recreation centre that bears her name.

The east end of the suburb became known as Belgravia, where there existed a number of "desirable residences in a locality where social advantages are to be obtained". It was, in fact, in Belgravia that Julius Jeppe built his mansion, later used as Lord Kitchener's headquarters and later as a boys' hostel serving Jeppe High School. It has sadly now disappeared.

The Jeppe House was, however, described as "the ducal palace". The transition between Jeppestown and Belgravia was marked by a tollgate across the roadway next to Salisbury House, and the toll road was described as "Jeppe House's long tree-lined driveway". The trees are still there, providing a wonderful shady avenue.

It was through Salisbury House that I wandered on Wednesday. Built in 1903, the building boasted ground floor retail while the upper level provided residential accommodation with verandahs edged in cast-iron "broekie lace". An example of Victorian architecture and construction, its verandah-style design was based on assembling cast-iron components ordered from a catalogue of Walter Macfarlane's Glasgow foundry.

As with so many of our jewels supposedly in the safekeeping of public authorities, the building has been raped by vandals. Many of the magnificent panelled and lead lighted doors are gone, all brassware and many floors of broad Oregon-pine floorboards are gone as are the fireplace surrounds and sanitaryware.

The good news is that the building is being leased from the council by the School of Practical Philosophy, which is seeking funding to restore the building and place it back into everyday use as a much-needed extension to its educational facilities. The SPP owns and occupies the original St Mary's' school building directly to the north of Salisbury House where it has established the St James Preparatory School.

Read Neil Fraser's full column

Source: Johannesburg News Agency