There has been a very interesting contribution by Allan Hannah to a previous entry on the Musgrave area. Allan grew up in the area and has kindly set down his memories of people and places including the Los Angeles Hotel. Click here to go to the page and scroll down to his reply to Gerald Buttigieg’s comment.
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We’re going to try an experiment but don’t be worried, it won’t hurt at all.
Regular contributor Gerald Buttigieg sent in a story (a loooong time ago) about Durban’s dairies and bakeries that he dug up from his memories and a book. There is no facility for people to add their own memories to the regular pages on the site and so the experiment is for you to:
READ THE STORY HERE AND COME BACK AND LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW.
I’ll kick things off to show how easy it is….
Reader Elaine Howson sent in a contribution to this post a shamefully long time ago. I lost it and have only recently rediscovered it and so here it is:
My Great Grandparents Thomas Henry Aitken and Margaret Aitken migrated from Dunbar in Scotland with their two children Francis and Evelyn in 1903 to Durban, South Africa. They ran a dairy at Springfield for maybe 9 years as Margaret passed away in July 1913.
Thomas Henry, Margaret, Francis and Evelyn are all in the photo. The elderly gentleman is Archibald Aitken, Thomas Henry’s father who visited them from Scotland. Thomas and Margaret are both buried at Stamford Hill Cemetary [now known as Umgeni Cemetary].
I hope this is useful information
Yours sincerely
Elaine Howson
In a number of places in this site a tragic aircrash on Stamford Hill Airfield during WWII is mentioned. There is an eyewitness account, a few more details and, now, a picture of the pilot sent in by his nephew John Blake.
On another more cheerful subject, Dave Tilley wrote in with the following about the Mermaid Lido:
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This was built in the early fifties by JG and Ron Tilley (grandfather and father respectively), who were also builders in the Durban area between 1947 and 1954.
The top floor of the mermaid was a restaurant with a dance floor below and the shops as described. The yearly lifesaving competitions also used to be held from this location with at least 12 teams taking part. This used to be quite scary as those being ‘saved’ used to swim out to the nets and at times sharks could be seen on the other side.
Regards
David Tilley (UK)
My informant Trevor Friend reminded me that I have a number of his pictures taken during the visit of the VC10 to Durban, referred to in the previous post. I had never gotten around to posting them and am now very glad to repair that omission. See the page here.
A while ago I included Trevor Friend’s memories of Durban including the visit of the VC10 aircraft to Durban for trials. I have since heard from Maurice Ungless who was on that aircraft and I have put up a page with his memories and a couple of pictures.
My informant Pat Sligo has chimed in with a couple of things lately. He provided some missing info on the cinemas page and I managed to find a picture of the Prince’s Theatre and Playhouse, which had been missing from the page.
Pat also sent in the following short memories: Read More
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My informant Patrick Coyne wrote in with a question about a German bomber flying over Durban:
Dear Allan
You may remember me as the guy who wrote LOOK BACK WITH PRIDE! , the history of Gordon Road Girls’ School, plus the parallel Durban history. In the book there was the story of the evacuee girl from England who dived under her desk when she heard a German bomber over Durban.
I have written to the media asking if anyone remembers that incident, and if so, what date it was, and what type of German bomber. It was of course a captured German bomber flown down from Tobruk to Durban for inspection. I want to write more about this. Any help you can give me will be appreciated.
Regards
Patrick
UPDATE 9/6/2012: John Taylor has come up with a plausible explanation for this story in the comments below this story and he even sent in some pictures. I have added them here because I seem to have forgotten how to add pictures to a comment in WordPress.
After a shamefully long time (emigration pushed a lot of things onto the back burner), I have finally gotten around to posting the balance of the pictures and news clippings sent in by my informant Pat Sligo. Pat was among those Durban schoolboys lucky enough to go on a camp with the South African Air Force at Lake Msingazi in Zululand in 1947 and have a couple of flips in the squadron’s Sunderland flying boats. Pat’s page is here and the other stuff I have on flying boats in Durban is here.
Keeping up with my resolution to add something to FAD monthly, this month I am taking a cue from John Taylor’s post about Musgrave Centre. Henwoods will only be a name familiar to those who knew Durban as it was prior to the 1970s as sadly after that the name Henwoods and its familiar logo have since disappeared along with many other old Durban names. I am posting a bit of Henwood’s history again from an excellent book I found in Pietermaritzburg at a second hand outlet. The book is titled Natal Municipal Association 1904-1964 Diamond Jubilee. Read More
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My informant John Taylor wrote in with some memories of an earlier version of Musgrave Centre:
Hi Allan,
It’s probably fair to say that Musgrave Centre in its original form was the first suburban shopping centre in Durban.
As I recall it was constructed in the late nineteen fifties, and I remember it reasonably well because my mother was the receptionist / nurse for the doctor’s consulting rooms on the first floor. Does anyone also have memories of the original Musgrave Centre (a far cry from what it is today!) or have photographs of it?
As I recall there was a Henwoods Hardware Store, a florist, a hobby shop, CNA, a liquor store, a shoe store, a Francis Freres dry cleaning depot, post office, and coffee shop on the ground floor. Up on the first floor there was a public library, doctors and dentists rooms, an oxygen clinic (whatever that was), the offices of a pharmaceutical company called Abbott Laboratories, and a restaurant called Chez Nous.
There were certainly a number of other shops that escape my memory. Unlike the Musgrave Centre of today that stretches all the way between Musgrave and Essenwood Roads, the original Musgrave Centre ended half way between the two, with the area adjoining Essenwood Road being an open tarred parking area.
Kind regards,
John Taylor
I must confess that I don’t remember the centre from those days. Our family did do its grocery shopping at Gwilt’s Supermarket a little further up Musgrave Road towards St Thomas’ Road. It was more or less opposite the Catholic Church, if I remember correctly. As a small boy, I remember being fascinated by the fact that they sliced your bacon for you at the deli; the start of a lifelong devotion to cured pork.
Six years ago I posted a story, first published in Wings magazine in 1956, on Durban’s aviation history. It must have got lost in the shuffle when I moved the site to different web host, but I have now restored it to its rightful place.
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