Port Elizabeth of Yore: When Mill Park was in the Country

In a series of articles, Norman Smith, the son of HB Smith, records events of his life in Port Elizabeth. In this one, he records what life was like in early Mill Park shortly after it became the suburb in the country. This is a lightly redacted copy of that article.

Main picture: 18 Woodeville Avenue, Mill Park

Although its street address was No 18 Woodville Road, the major street frontage wandered around the comer along Young Road in Mill Park. Clearly it was a double plot. The side boundaries swooped down the hillside until they stopped only a few metres short of the precipitous drop into the Baakens River closely adjacent to the road bridge into Walmer. I cannot recall the actual measurements, but the place seemed enormous to a 4-year-old. After No 22 Bird Street it was really out in the veld.

My first memories are of the ceilings. They were made of a material known as “Beaver Board”. When the wind was in the west, deep in the stillness of the night a loud creak would sound in the south-west corner of the house. As the gust persisted, the creak would travel across the ceiling to our bedroom in the north-east corner. I hated it.

Location of Gubbs Location

There were two balconies, one above the other. The ground-floor one was much beloved by my mother as an indoor plantarium liberally served by teak plant-racks. The first-floor balcony served as a playroom and had a magnificent view across the Baakens Valley to Walmer; from there we could see the “Walmer Coffee-Pot” (the suburban train) negotiating the rather dodgy curve from Fifth Avenue into Water Road.

There was a garage facing onto Woodville Road. This was a glorious place, full of pieces of wood, tools of every possible description, delicious smells of paint and glue. This was where “Pop” (our father) used to conjure up the most exotic toys – a model of the “Carnarvon Castle” hewn out of a most unpromising chunk of hollowed-out wood with two Kodak film canisters for funnels, a cigar-box lid for a “boat-deck”, sawn-off dowels for masts and a piece of flattened-out lead piping as ballast to keep the whole affair floating upright. Finishing coats of Union-Castle colours completed this small boy’s dream-boat. There were many others.

Carnarvon Castle in PE in 1956

On occasions when the faithful Maxwell car failed to start, the family and staff were naturally assembled to push her out into the street. Thence, the slope of Woodville Road was usually sufficient to kick the reluctant engine into life. One glorious day, to the great delight of brother Matthew and myself, a Municipal gang turned up to re-surface the road. Among their equipment was a steamroller! Modem children have the wonders of TV and computer games but, to us, the steamroller was a joy to behold.

Steamroller used in laying Albany Road
Opening Albany Road

Everything about it was so ecstatically obvious. The long boiler with the little steam engine mounted on top. The tall chimney, the spinning flywheel driving goodness-knows-what to get the power to the enormous road wheels, the front steering roller wider than my bed and controlled by impressive chains. The little coalbin behind the driver’s seat and the large canopy overall. In charge of it all, the driver. What bliss for us two when he agreed to drive his monster up and down the small gravel driveway to our garage.

Unfortunately the driveway was built only for the weight of light vehicles. When the roller departed to resume its intended purpose there was a clearly visible dip in the gravel surface. Pushing the Maxwell out was never again to be so easy. I cannot recall my father’s reaction, but I sincerely hope that the driver was not admonished.

Westbourne Road

There was no main drainage in that part of Mill Park in the early ‘twenties. The house was served by a septic tank which, on the whole, worked well. When it didn’t and the wind was in the south-west we would have preferred main drainage! This came a few years later and rumour had it that when the trench-digging gang unearthed a human skeleton they hurtled out of the trench and couldn’t be persuaded back to work for some time. (This part of the area had once accommodated Gubb’s Location [an early form of small African township] and the route of the trench had unwittingly been laid through the burial ground.)

Close up of the steps in Essexvale

An enthusiastic salesman managed to persuade my father to let him install (purely on a trial basis) a “wireless set”. This occupied the full length of the fairly large sideboard in the dining room and spilled over on to a side table in the bay window. I recall several large glass jars lined with silver paper and so much wire that the equipment was obviously mis-named. It was, however, of the very latest design because it had a loud-speaker which enjoyed pride of place on the side table. On the night of its first trial, it picked up a broadcast of the most beautiful music, alleged to be from Cape Town. I subsequently begged Pop repeatedly to “get it” again but to no avail. (Of course, I didn’t realise that programmes change from day to day). He then decided that he would rather have the sideboard back in its intended use and the “wireless” set was returned whence it came.

Our live-in gardener was housed in a stone-walled thatch-roofed rondavel some 30 metres from the main house. One chilly winter’s evening, when my father was away on a land­ surveying job, the gardener turned up at the kitchen door and, without comment, pulled up a chair in front of the white-enamelled coal-fired stove and hoisted his feet on to the stainless­ steel towel rail which adorned the front of the stove. Coloured maid-servant Kitty, wide-eyed, stared horrified at my mother, who ignored the matter. After a few minutes, mother left the kitchen and telephoned Uncle Oswald, who arrived a little while later carrying a large revolver which he left with her after she had assured him that she would be all right.

Wild Fig Tree in Waverley Road Mill Park

Back in the ‘twenties such behaviour on the part of a servant was quite unbelievable and totally unacceptable. However, mother calmly returned to the kitchen and laid the weapon on the table. As she opened the chambers and inspected the bullets (recently instructed thereto by Uncle Oswald!) Kitty asked “Would Madam use that?”. Mother replied off-handedly “Oh yes, I’ve had to do so before now” or words to that effect.

Old Mill House, Mill Park

Very quietly the gardener rose, put the chair back in its place and departed back to his rondavel. I can’t recall whether he continued to work for us or not. Possibly not, because a little while later the rondavel became a playroom in which was laid out the track for my beloved clockwork Homby train set.

The Forgotten Stairway linking Mill Park with Target Kloof below

One of the delights of living in Mill Park was the not infrequent chance of riding in the electric tram down Cape Road. The tram was a short 4-wheeled vehicle with a long seat running down each side of the enclosed cabin and a transverse seat across the open platform at each end. We kids liked to travel in the open. The track was slightly uneven, the ups and downs producing a pronounced pitching motion when the car got up to speed. Added to this was a side-to-side wiggle due to the rails not having been laid perfectly straight, the total result being a glorious corkscrew motion at the platform seats. We loved it!

Tram in Cape Road with a Ford Prefect behind it

We left No 18 in 1932 when my father retired in order to fulfil a long-cherished dream of building a hotel on his farm “Redclyffe”, just beyond Misgund in the Langkloof.

Sources:
Houses I Lived in (2) by Norman Crawford Smith
Kindly provided by his daughter: Gillian Russell-Johansen (nee Smith)

5/5 - (1 vote)

Leave a Comment.

*