This, the oldest unaltered house in Port Elizabeth, bears a specific significance in my life. The original owner of that house – the Reverend Francis McCleland – was my great-great-grandfather. In 1962 the house was declared a National Monument. In order to restore the parsonage house from a place of ill-repute back to its former glory, all members of the McCleland clan in Port Elizabeth were requested to contribute financially to this process.
This blog chronicles how this parsonage came to be erected in Port Elizabeth, its fall from grace, and then how it achieved its current status as a treasured museum
Main picture: This must be the earliest view of Number 7 Castle Hill – a lithograph by W.J. Huggins showing whaling in Algoa Bay in 1832. The recently completed house of Francis McCleland stands alone at the top of Castle Hill, midway between Fort Frederick and the memorial pyramid to Lady Donkin, after whom the town of Port Elizabeth was named
Francis’ background
Francis McCleland was of Irish extraction being born in Longford [Town] in December 1791. On the 7th October 1811 he entered Trinity College in Dublin to study Divinity, qualifying in the summer of 1817. After appointment as a deacon in June 1819 at Temple Michael in Longford Town, he finally obtained an appointment as a priest on the 7th November 1819.

Floor Plan of No. 7 Castle Hill – By courtesy of Messrs. Owen Eaton, Roux & Wolmarans
At that stage he had probably heard through a compatriot, William Parker, about a plan by the British to settle some of their citizens in the Eastern Cape, the intention being to establish a bulwark against incursion by the Xhosas. This vital piece of information was withheld from them. None were to be settled in the village of Port Elizabeth itself, a recently established town with no facilities apart from a fort.
On 23rd November 1819, Francis arrived in London presumably to meet William Parker. Immediately Francis drafted a letter from his residence in Adelphi, London, to the Colonial Office. This letter is extant. On the 10th December, he addresses yet another letter to the Colonial Office. Both relate to the impending trip to the Cape. William Parker and Francis McCleland then boarded the ship, the East Indian, back to Passage West outside Cork in Ireland together with some British settlers.

A watercolour of Number 7 Castle Hill
Legend to picture: A 1850 view of Castle Hill as seen from the Market Square. It was drawn by road engineer Henry Fancourt White. The almost indistinct numbers represent the following: 1. Jail; 2. The first Post Office in Port Elizabeth, later the house of Mr Caithness. It is recognizable in the picture below dated 1864; 3. Richards and Impey; 4. Mrs Philips; 5. Mr Heugh 6. Caesar Andrews; 7. Sterley’s cottages; 8. Rev. F McCleland; 9. Mr Ashkettle 10. The public well with people drawing water
En route back to Ireland after visiting the Colonial Office in London, Francis’s fiery temper came to the fore. He got involved in an fracas with some English gentlemen and according to reports roundly vilifies them. Back at Passage West awaiting the arrival of the Irish Settler contingent, Francis met a petite 19 year old lass by the name of Elizabeth Clark. It is love at first sight. On the 4th February 1820 he married her at the St Mary’s Church in Passage West.
Above: No. 7 Castle Hill. This is part of Walford Arbouin Harries’s drawing lithographed in 1851. Jarvis’s house and the present No. 7, home of Rev. McCleland (land bought at the end of 1827) are at the top left. Opposite are Henry Jones’s house circa 1838 and William Sterley’s cottages. Facing the sea are Pieter Heugh’s large “Prospect House” and adjoining it Caesar Andrews’s matching one. The cottage at the centre was built circa 1838 by James Ellicott, sold to George Turner and inherited by his wife, later Mrs Phillips. It is still standing in Hope Street.
Eight days later on the 12th February, the newly married couple set sail for South Africa. En route to the Cape, Francis yet again gets into a confrontation with fellow passengers. Parker decides to lay a formal complaint with the Colonial Office regarding this incident. On 1st May 1820, the East India anchors off Simon’s Bay, as it was then called.
William Parker rowed to shore, then rides by horse to Cape Town in order to obtain further instructions and to hand over his complaint regarding Francis’s obnoxious behaviour. The Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, was unavailable but the acting Governor, Sir Rufane Donkin, was.

Map of PE in 1823
In Somerset’s absence, Donkin had already elected to amend the explicit instructions that all settlers were to be sent to the Eastern Frontier. Fearing clashes between the English and the Irish settlers, he decided to settle the latter in Clanwilliam over a 1000kms from the English settlers being settled in the Eastern Cape.

Sir Rufane Donkin
Without sufficient land and water at Clanwilliam and William Parker clearly on his own mission, treating many of his fellow Irishmen as indentured labourers, a veritable mutiny broke out. Many of the party were allowed to immediately be relocated to the Eastern Cape but William himself elected to return to Ireland. Of the minority who agreed to remain in Clanwilliam, Francis was one of them.
This was not to last. After yet another altercation with his fellow Irishmen, in 1825 he was offered a job as Colonial Chaplain, which he readily accepted.

Nineteenth century farm in Clanwilliam
Acquisition of the stand and Erection of the Parsonage
On arrival in Port Elizabeth in early September 1825 what greeted the couple was a windy sand-swept little village. As Churchouse laconically comments; “It would have been difficult to escape the impression that the small number of little whitewashed cottages had a tenuous hold on the sandy coastline. The only street was ankle deep in sand”

Sketch of the Reverend Francis McCleland
However their most immediate concern was accommodation. As the church did not provide a house for their first clergyman, Francis and Elizabeth presumably rented a cottage for their first two to three years. Alternatively they slept in tents for whole or portion thereof.
Instead of acquiring a plot close to the shoreline, in November 1827 Francis purchased a stand close to the crest of the hill some distance from the other foreshore. The sum paid was a princely three guineas [three pounds and three shillings] conditional on his building “a good and substantial house” within eighteen months of the date of purchase.
In former days, the property extended to the site of the original Collegiate Girls School and Annerley Terrace forming the well-known “Parson’s Garden”.
Indigenous yellow wood, sandstone together with locally made bricks and tiles were generously used in its construction. The style was the contemporary Georgian unlike the settlers to New Zealand who had adopted a more iconoclastic style. As a testimony to its sturdy construction, Number 7 has stood up remarkable well to the ravages of time and weather.
In 1831, Francis took a bond on the house for £150 and in 1836 Francis bonded the house for a further £500.

No 7 Castle Hill’s cobbled stone courtyard
During those years, Elizabeth had an accident of unknown description which resulted in her having difficulty in walking down the steep hill. To mitigate this problem, Francis petitioned the government to grant him an erf in the lower part of town. He even considered building again. As Fuller notes, “[This grant] would enable Mrs McCleland to be much more attentive to her Sunday School, who in consequence of an accident is frequently incapacitated from going to church.”

The basement kitchen and the pantry that adjoins it have brick floors, and are furnished with a collection of old utensils
He was not granted a new erf and at some stage during the next few years, he built the double storeyed eastern wing onto the parsonage. This addition to the house consisted of a large room downstairs and a bedroom above it. The large bedroom was necessitated by the birth of yet another daughter, Anna D’Urban McCleland.
The enlarged house with its wonderful view of the bay was comfortable and certainly large by the standards of the day.

The well at No7 Castle Hill
Features
It features a steep stairway with a simple wooden hand-rail leads from the entrance hall to the bedrooms above. The floors throughout the house are of polished yellow-wood, and the recessed shutters in the deep window reveals provide protection as well as shade.
The interior presents a picture of domestic life as enjoyed by an English middle class family in mid-19th Century Port Elizabeth. This picturesque family dwelling located in Castle Hill Road, Central has Yellow wood floors and beams, and a restored slate roof. The doll’s house, lace displays and kitchen is particularly impressive.
No 7 Castle Hill’s Courtyard
Francis died in July 1853 after a long illness.
Later Years
In 1861 the house was advertised “To Let” but it remained the property of the McCleland daughters until it was sold to Mr James Daly in 1904.

Advert-Family Mansion to Let
As one of a number of lodging houses that Daly owned in the neighbourhood, it fell into disrepair and disrepute and was eventually condemned by the municipal; authorities. Then in 1938, Mr HB Smith, the Government Land Surveyor, bought it from Daly’s estate and saved it by renovating it as a comfortable home for himself. It was a great source of pride to him and he welcomed its proclamation as a National Monument shortly before his death in 1962. He had hoped that it might eventually be turned into a museum and with this intention, the house was purchased jointly with the City Council and the Provincial Administration in 1963 and some basic repairs were carried out. On his death, the house was purchased by the then City Council for the princely sum of R6,890.00 – according to the First and Final Liquidation and Distribution account.

Dining room
When it became apparent that more work was entailed than had at first being envisioned, the care of the house was entrusted to the Historical Society of Port Elizabeth who raised funds, worked on the restoration and begged, borrowed and bought suitable furniture for it.
The modern asbestos roof was replaced with slate, rotten external plaster was renewed, and new internal shutters were constructed for the ground floor windows.

Bedroom
In September 1965, No. 7 was officially opened to the public.
The house has been decorated and furnished to present a picture of nineteenth century domestic life in Port Elizabeth. The collection of furniture and domestic objects that have been donated for display in Number 7 reflects a thriving mid-Victorian community, whose members had progressed well beyond their settler beginnings and who had put down roots, surrounded themselves with possessions, and acquired a style of permanence.

Old needlework is displayed in the bedrooms
The exhibits are mostly of English origin from the period 1850 to 1870, with a few notable exceptions; the stinkwood table in the entrance hall is a Cape piece circa 1750 and the long case clock opposite it, was made in Scotland towards the end of the same century. Furthermore in the parlour there is an early nineteenth century Cape-made bookcase with glazed upper doors.

Painting of 7 Castle Hill
The pictures and ornaments on the ground floor are almost all of historical interest. The young officer whose portrait hangs in the parlour was Mrs McCleland’s brother, Ensign Clark of the Fourth Regiment of Foot, and the dining room is decorated with views of early Port Elizabeth in which Number 7 is clearly visible. The model of the old Bird Island lighthouse, protected by a typical Victorian glass “shade”, was made by the first lighthouse-keeper in 1855 from shells collected on the island.

Decayed plaster was removed from the external walls during repairs in 1963, revealing the random stone coursing supplemented with brick.
The walls of the basement kitchen have been stripped of plaster to reveal the stone work beneath, still showing traces of colour wash. There is a brick bread oven built into the wall and the soot blackened hearth beside it, which has evidently been altered from its original form giving rise to much speculation about the cooking arrangements of the first occupants of the house. The variety of utensils on display includes such unusual objects such as loaf sugar cutter, candle moulds and an early waffle iron.

Plaque at 7 Castle Hill, Port Elizabeth
Fine old needlework is displayed in the bedrooms and in the sewing room which features a treadle sewing machine made in Massachusetts in 1870.
Decayed plaster was removed from the external walls during repairs in 1963, revealing the random stone coursing supplemented with brick.

Kitchen
A steep stairway with a simple wooden hand-rail leads from the entrance hall to the bedrooms above. The floors throughout the house are of polished yellow wood, and the recessed shutters in the deep window reveals provide protection as well as shade.
The kitchen in the basement has the original Bak-oond, transporting some, older, visitors back to their childhood. There is an old wood stove, a manual washing machine and a very clever peach-peeler amongst many other interesting items.
The original well is still working in the cobbled courtyard, bearing testament to the engineering expertise of the settlers. “The well in the courtyard is original and acts as an underground ‘tank’. It is made of the same sandstone as the house. Water is siphoned off the roof down gutters, into the well. The pump is dated 1849 and still works. The vine in the courtyard is beautiful and produces wonderful grapes,” said Hart of her caught-in-time museum.
Today
Today it is an historical museum furnished in the style of the mid-Victorian era. The original charming cobblestones in the backyard have been retained and the hand-pumped well was restored and is in running order
It was opened as a historical museum in 1965 and is furnished to show a picture of domestic life as enjoyed by an English middle class family in mid-19th Century Port Elizabeth.
Though the house itself is from an earlier era its displays have a strong Victorian focus, including a collection of pipes and other fascinating knickknacks so favoured by people in Victorian times
No 7 Castle Hill truly captures the ‘old’ Port Elizabeth in the ambience of the building’s interior and exterior.
____________________
Wording on Historical Monuments plaque
_____________________
PARSONAGE HOUSE
PARSONAGE HOUSE, BUILT ABOUT 1830, WAS
THE HOUSE OF THE REVEREND FRANCIS
McCLELAND, 1820 SETTLER, COLONIAL CHAPLAIN
AND FIRST RECTOR OF ST. MARY’S CHURCH,
PORT ELIZABETH. IT WAS OWNED AND OCCUPIED
BY HIM FROM THE TIME IT WAS BUILT UNTIL
HIS DEATH IN 1853 AND IS ONE OF THE OLDEST
HOUSES KNOWN TO SURVIVE IN THE CITY.
Historical Monuments Commission
1964
Slide show on No 7 Castle Hill

Certificate of Donor # 23 Mr Harry Clifford McCleland
Blogs of the Life of Rev Francis McCleland
Kirkcudbright Document: Establishing the McCleland’s Right to Peerage
Correspondence regarding Rev Francis McCleland with Colonial Office in London
Sources:
Books:
The Reverend Francis McCleland: Colonial Chaplain to Port Elizabeth 1825 to 1853 by Churchouse
Hills Covered with Cottages by Margaret Harradine
Port Elizabeth: A Social Chronicle to 1945 by Margaret Harradine
Pamphlet by Museum: Number 7 Castle Hill
Photos: Off internet and Jonker Fourie’s blog
H B Smith was my late mother’s uncle, and I can remember visiting H.B as a child. If my memory is anything to go by, his bedroom had a magnificent view over the harbour. On his death, the house was purchased by the then city council for the princely sum of R6,890.00 – according to First and Final Liquidation and Distribution account.
Hi Peter.
Thanks for that information. I am in the process of writing a whole bunch of blogs on PE, my home town. You can access them on the left panel under “Port Elizabeth of Yore”. I also have more personal memories under “Family Histories – McClelands”
Hi Dean.
Rev Francis McCleland is my great great great grandfather I believe. Do you live in PE still??
Hi Shaun
No, I don’t. I have lived in Joburg for 35 years now. Who is your father & grandfather. By the way, I am in the process of writing a biography on Rev Francis McCleland. I have already posted bits & pieces under the family history section of my blog.
Regards
Dean
Hi Shaun please contact me my great great grandfather is Rev Francis McCleland.
Hi Shaun
You wanted me to contact you because your Great grand father was the Rev Francis McCleland
My contact details are:
082 801 5446
deanm@orangedotdesigns.co.za
As always, I am left wanting more- yet utterly enthralled by your story- the pictures and the fact that you are/have recorded so much of the history of Port Elizabeth- for ‘our’ edification- and enjoyment. This museum, is in my bucketlist- soon, soon, bev
Hi Beverley
Thanks for your feedback. I will hopefully one day be able to produce a book using my blogs as the basis thereof
Regards
Dean