With another week having passed without a word from the Heritage Association and feeling frustrated by all the wasted time, we took ourselves off to Parkhurst twice today to remind ourselves why we’ve decided it will be a good place to live.  Eventually.  This morning we  had brunch in 4th Avenue which must be one of the most vibrant neighbourhood roads in Johannesburg these days.  It has a great, old-fashioned High Street feel to it and throngs with families out to eat, couples strolling along the pavements and dog-walkers.

Then later this afternoon we took two of the dogs for a walk in ‘our’ park.  We approached the park from the northern side this time, (parking in Hamilton Avenue, Craighall Park) and found it looking beautiful.  The grass has been recently mown and the trees are ablaze with autumn colours.  We crossed the river which is not much more than a trickle at the moment and walked up to our boundary wall.  Several houses away from ours, a gate opened and three dogs tumbled out followed by their owner.  So we have now met a close neighbour who walks his dogs in the park at least twice a day and who reassured us that it is a wonderful place to live.  He was dumbfounded to hear about our Heritage woes. And we were pleased to meet a friendly neighbour.

Here are some pictures of the park, taken from the northern side.

View from Northern boundary of the park.

North to South park view

A taste of future freedom…

With my creative energy thwarted in Parkhurst, I’ve turned my attention instead to decorating the long-neglected doll’s house….

The only London Townhouse I’ll ever own…

Well last Tuesday didn’t go well.  The morning started with an early phonecall from our contractor who had been contacted by our left-hand-side-neighbour, with a complaint that her electric fence had been damaged, her wall ‘destabilised’ and her security compromised…  This was not our first ‘headbut’ with this particular neighbour.  I refrained from writing about the first one…

There’s an old saying that reads something to the effect of not being able to ‘bake a cake without breaking a few eggs.’  Somebody needs to remind our neighbour of this and that will probably eventually have to be me.  Her own house is beautiful and was extensively renovated quite recently.  I wonder how she did it without making any noise or breaking anything in the process.

The contractor, who has previously told me that he has had experience with every possible kind of difficult neighbour, seems to have almost met his match with this one.  He was not happy.  The neighbour’s electric fence technician was there and there was no evidence to be found of damage or destabilisation anywhere.  Although I’m not sure the same could have been said for the people involved…  I decided to simply let things be for a while.

A couple of  days and a couple of phone calls later and we’ve decided that the very first thing we will build, at the soonest possible opportunity, will be the new boundary wall between our property and hers. In the meantime she wants to install electric fencing down that side but it seems completely pointless to do that until the new wall is in place.  We’re going to meet with her and her security consultant tomorrow afternoon.

The rest of Tuesday passed in disappointing silence with not a word from the Heritage Association.  By Thursday I’d decided the time had come to be more proactive and eventually managed to track down the website, a name and a contact number for PHRAG – the Provincial Heritage Resources Agency – Gauteng.

I called the number without expecting much and was taken by surprise when the phone was answered promptly by none other than the man I had hoped to speak to, Mr Grant Botha.  He was helpful and informative and said that the usual waiting period in these situations is 8 to 10 weeks, a fact that had somehow passed us by.  It is, I think, 7 weeks since our application was submitted.

The Association had met on Tuesday but had only dealt with ‘presentations’ which I assume must be for applications to alter or demolish buildings with bone fide heritage credentials.  The ‘lesser’ applications were deferred to a later date.  This was not good news.  It seems this week is to be taken up with ‘staff training’ and the next possible date for our hearing is the 30th of April.  I don’t want to get my hopes up as the next day, the 1st, is a public holiday and most of this country will take either the two days leading up to the 1st as holidays, or the two days after as holidays or, – and this is the most likely scenario – the entire week.  

And so the Waiting Game continues.

There was once a time when I thought ‘Shambles’ might be a good name for a house.  It is, after all, a lovely word: satisfyingly onomatopoeic, it needs no further explanation.  But, on reflection, much as I like the sound of it, actually living in it is not that appealing and I decided that as a name it might be better suited to an Old English Sheepdog.

It’s a shambles.

But right now, ‘Shambles’ would be the perfect name for our new property.

After our high hopes last Monday, the silence was deafening.  A phone call (made by our architect) on Tuesday, established that for no rhyme or reason, the reluctant Heritage Committee had arbitrarily deferred the promised meeting.  Now, we’re told, it is set to take place tomorrow.  We’re not holding our breath.

But today, being in the vicinity while waiting for Daisy to emerge from the parlour, we dropped in to check on progress and discovered that in the meantime, the contractor has demolished almost all the younger parts of the house.  Being a small stand, there is not a lot of space left that is not covered in rubble, roof trusses and window frames.  It’s difficult to move around but already, with the left-hand ‘modern’ wing removed, we’re able to get a much better impression of the length of the plot  and it is easier to imagine where the cottage and garages will be positioned.

The left wing has been demolished.

In the extremely unlikely event that we’re refused permission to demolish

Looking back towards the street

completely, it would be very difficult to restore any sort of order around the old footprint.  But I’m not even going to allow myself to think about that.  The picture below is a view of the some of the rooms that are over 60 years old.  For this we need the Heritage Association to meet.

On Tuesday I visited the Parkhurst house for the first time since it had been vacated by the previous owners.  As we’d only been interested in it for the position of the stand and not for the house itself, I had not previously seen any more of the house than the small area between the front door and the French doors leading out into the garden.  I took a friend along with me for company and between the two of us, we determined that there was not anything of real value that needed saving in the garden and nothing that I needed to be concerned about preserving in the house itself.  The original structure may be over 60 years old but there are no special features such as pressed steel ceilings that in any way redeem it.  Over the years, other bits and pieces have been added on to the house, resulting in a complete mish-mash of styles, levels, window frames and floor coverings.    It is a little frustrating that we are being delayed by the Heritage Committee at this stage when there is absolutely nothing that could interest them in any way.

On Thursday I returned to the house with the architect and the contractor we have employed to demolish the house as soon as the permission to do so is granted.  Between Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning a few things had changed.  The automatic garage door would not work and we managed to open the pedestrian door onto the street only with considerable difficulty.  The motor for the garage door was still in place but the front door was standing wide open and had been propped in position with bricks.   Inside we found that somebody had managed to gain access to the house and had removed the very old under-cover oven from the kitchen and, from the number of cigarettes that had been smoked, had spent a fair amount of time in the house, probably trying to find other bits and pieces that might be worth removing.

Contractor and Architect on site

It’s slightly disconcerting to feel that people become aware so quickly that a property is empty and unprotected and that they are prepared to go to so much trouble to get possession of such very old and well-used appliances.  The contractor did not seem at all surprised by this and assured us that he would take control of the site just as soon as we had signed his contract and that he would arrange for one of his employees to move onto the property as soon as possible.  Needless to say we signed on the spot…

He also explained that he can begin dismantling all the parts of the building that do not fall under the 60 year old limit and that he will start doing that on Monday.

Cottage and Shed can be dismantled immediately