A different view on current affairs & history
Main picture: Landing through the surf
One of the little known facts about Port Elizabeth of Yore is that there was another church in Main Street apart from St. Mary’s. It was known by the highly imaginative name of The New Church. It stood in Main Street between Donkin Street and Constitutional Hill, which extended down to Main Street in those days. This church was initially an independent church built by the members of Union Chapel.
Main picture: New Church is on the right looking towards the market square. One is unable to view the Town Hall at the end of Main Street, as it did not yet exist.
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For me and possibly other Port Elizabethians, the road up Cooper’s Kloof, commonly known as Albany Road, does not have the same prominence or cachet of either Russell or White’s Road. Nevertheless, it does serve as a vital arterial road carrying traffic both to Cape Road and through to Walmer via Target Kloof.
Main picture: Albany Road in 1865
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Prior to the arrival of the 1820 Settlers, it would have been an exaggeration to claim that Port Elizabeth was sparsely populated as that was an overstatement of the facts. Indeed, it was mostly depopulated. Apart from a dozen farmers in the whole area from the Sunday’s River to the Gamtoos River, there was an understrength company of soldiers based at Fort Frederick and thirty-five inhabitants mainly residing along the coast at the foot the Hill.
In addition there were bands of Khoikhoi but as they were peripatetic, evidence of their existence was seldom seen.
Main picture: Port Elizabeth in 1833
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Everybody who has grown up in Port Elizabeth must have been to the Stage Door at some point during their misspent youth. What is fascinating is that the Phoenix Hotel has been in operation since the early 1840s, first in Market Square, and since 1941 at 5 Chapel Street, making it the oldest operating hotel in Port Elizabeth.
Main picture: The original Phoenix Hotel located in Market Square
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June 28, 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Serbian assassin, Gavrilo Princip, fired the first shot in what was to become a horrific four-year long bloodbath. Unbeknownst to the inhabitants of a peaceful settler town on the coast of Algoa Bay, that shot would ultimately reverberate within its military barracks, its churches and its homes.
One hundred years after the start of the Great War, none of the participants remains alive, Harry Patch being the last to pass away. Nevertheless, we are periodically reminded of the valiant but ultimately futile exercise by the aging relics, fading photographs, scarred landscapes being reclaimed by nature, and memorials and graveyards across the globe.
This blog is in memory of a few of those sons, fathers, brothers and friends from Port Elizabeth who paid the ultimate price for that assassin’s bullet.
Main picture: Soldiers of an Australian 4th Division field artillery brigade walk on a duckboard track laid across a muddy, shattered battlefield in Chateau Wood, near Hooge, Belgium, on October 29, 1917. This was during the Battle of Passchendaele, fought by British forces and their allies against Germany for control of territory near Ypres, Belgium. (James Francis Hurley/State Library of New South Wales)
Sixty one years after the landing of the 1820 Settlers, the tramway network was established on 14th May 1881. As the initial trams were all horse drawn, no routes up the hill could be established. Instead the line followed the route of Main Street and its various extensions to North End. From 16th June 1897, it was converted to electrical power which allowed the routes to be extended up White’s and Russell Road.
The tramway network was finally closed down on 17th December 1948.
Main picture: My favourite picture of this era showing a horse drawn tram at the terminus where the incoming and outgoing lines merged
Of all the historical artefacts to have been lost in Port Elizabeth, the destruction of the old Customs House must be the most significant. Its demise was being badly damaged by fire in 1978. Attempts to save the building failed and it was demolished in 1982.
Main picture: Customs House with its tower which was removed after a flood in 1908
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Main picture: Main Street prior to trams
Horse drawn trams possessed manifold limitations foremost amongst them was the fact that the CBD has been built at the foot of an imposing hill which was impassable for these vehicles. Notwithstanding this, the Port Elizabeth tramway network was opened on 14 May 1881 operating with the available technology: horse-cars.
Main picture: A one horsepower Port Elizabeth tram in the 1880s. They were not suitable for hilly terrain such as Whites Road.
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