WOODSTOCK
Province/state: Cape
Province (previously Cape Colony since
1994, Western Cape)
Division: Cape
Magisterial district: Cape
Town.
Incorporated into: Cape
Town (1913)
Papendorp / Salt River / Observatory / Lawrence G Green / Wolraad Woltemade / railways / Salt River junction
Since these arms were in use only until 1913, and follow an unusual form of landscape depiction, it is fairly certain that they were official only in that the town council had adopted them. They may be blazoned:
Arms: Per fess, two seascapes, the upper one showing a sinking three-masted ship, the lower a horse and rider swimming to the sinister in rough waters, offering his hand in assistance to the dexter, all proper.
Crest: An anchor erect fouled proper; a dolphin urinant azure, its head resting on the sinister arm, the whole ensigned of a naval crown or.
Supporters: On either side a lion gules.
Motto: Per mare per terras.
The two scenes depicted on the shield relate to the events of 1 June 1773, when a Dutch vessel named De Jonge Thomas[1] was wrecked early in the morning on a sandbar at the mouth of the Salt River, about 300 metres from the shore.
The ship began breaking up, and many sailors tried to swim ashore. However, the cold water and the strong river current ensured that only the very strongest swimmers made it ashore; most were swept into Table Bay and drowned.
As was usual when a ship was wrecked, a military guard was posted on the beach to prevent looting. Among them was Corporal Christian Ludwig Woltemade. At sunrise his father, the
elderly Wolraad Woltemade, a dairy farmer, rode down from his home on his horse, Vonk, to the beach to take some food to the corporal.
The elder Woltemade decided to swim his horse out to the vessel and tell two crewmen to hold onto Vonk’s tail. Seven times he went out, bringing 14 men to safety. However on the 15th attempt both were exhausted and the ship began breaking up. Six men grabbed hold of horse and rider, drowning their rescuers as well as themselves.
In all, only 53 of the ship’s complement of 191 survived, 14 of them thanks to Woltemade snr (see below).
The crest represents the close ties between the town and the sea, the anchor representing seafaring in general and the Cape Colony in particular. The naval crown indicating links with the Royal Navy, and the dolphin the
creatures of the sea.
Franklyn and Tanner[2] note that the dolphin is “honoured in legend and folklore from pre-Christian
times. Symbolic of love and kindness, diligence and speed; the friend of mariners whom he would gladly rescue in the event of shipwreck.”
The lions may have been adopted in imitation of the single red lion which is the sinister supporter of the arms of Cape Town.
The motto translates as By sea and by land.
Artistic renditions:
The illustration above is a modern rendition of the town’s arms commissioned by the Woodstock Improvement District.
This is a Section 21[3] company formed to raise the profile of the suburb of Woodstock[4] through supplementing and enhancing the basic services offered by the City of
Cape Town; facilitating a co-operative approach between the city and private sector in the provision of municipal services; facilitating the upliftment of distressed business and mixed-use areas; promoting economic growth and sustainable development; and facilitating investment.
Its website is here.
The (rather fuzzy) black-and-white illustration at right dates back to the 19th century and is more like the arms
as actually used by the town council.
There are a number of points of difference. Firstly, in the shield base, the horse is shown with its head turned towards the rider, whereas the modern version shows it headed to the sinister side.
In the crest, the dolphin shown in the modern version is a natural dolphin, probably intended to represent an Atlantic bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus). However the 19th-century illustration shows a creature with fins and scales. In the Middle Ages, scholars believed that the dolphin was a fish, not a mammal, and the heralds accordingly illustrated it in this fashion.
Interestingly, St Michael’s Church in Observatory (in the area that once belonged to Woodstock) incorporates an anchor and dolphin in its arms to emphasise its connection with the town. In
the parish arms, the dolphin is shown as resting its tail on the anchor’s sinister fluke, but in the town’s arms it is shown urinant (diving) and embowed.
Lastly the modern version shows both lions standing in support of the shield – the conventional way of depicting a pair of lion supporters. However, the 19th-century version, in
typical Victorian fashion, shows the sinister lion frolicking, its tail in the air, its forepaws on the ground and its head in line with the dexter lion’s hindquarters.
About the town:
The Standard Encyclopædia of Southern Africa describes Woodstock as an industrial and residential suburb of Cape Town, some 2 km east of
the City Hall.
The name Papendorp was first attached to the area when Pieter van Papendorp lived there towards the end of the 18th century.
Salt River, which was part of the town of Woodstock, is 3 km east of the City Hall and grew around a ford across the river of that name. By 1665 it comprised an inn and several fishermen’s houses. In 1800 a grain mill was erected there.
In 1601 Joris van Spilbergen named the Salt River the Jacqueline, while Jan van Riebeeck sometimes called it Hollands Rietbeecq, and at other times Zout Rivier.
In colonial times the Salt River had two mouths, one on the north-eastern side of Paarden Eiland[5] (which actually was an island back then), and the other at southern end of Milnerton Lagoon.
In its upper course it was, and still is, called the Diep River. It rises near Riebeeck Kasteel, flows past Vissershok and feeds the Rietvlei before becoming the Milnerton Lagoon,
entering the sea at the southern end of the lagoon.
SESA notes: “Today the Salt River flows into the sea by its northern exit only. The southern part suvives only in some small
‘vleis’ which lie stagnating between Paarden Eiland and Brooklyn” – these, in earlier times, connected the lagoon with the mouth at Paarden Eiland.
The Liesbeeck[6] and Black rivers, originally tributary to the Salt River, are now canalised along the southernmost course of the Salt to the sea.
SESA notes that the French Lines – fortifications constructed by French troops defending the Cape in 1782 during the American War of Independence – stretched from Fort de Knokke in what is now Woodstock, up to the slopes of Devil’s Peak[7] (then known as Windberg). An alternative name is the Munnik Lines.
“The remains of one of the forts now support a wall of the trolley-bus depot at Toll Gate.”[8]
In 1806 the treaty by which the Batavian Republic ceded the Cape to Britain (this being the second British occupation of the colony) was signed at a farmhouse near Papendorp. The house was still in existence a century ago, but has long since been demolished. What remains is the Old Treaty Tree, which stands in Treaty Park, where the treaty is recalled by a monument with a brass plaque.
Further from SESA: “More dwellings were built along the main road,[9] near Van Papendorp’s house, in the first half of the 19th century, and by 1845 there were an English church and school. In the second half of the century development accelerated, especially after the coming of the railway early in the 1860s, and Papendorp became a fashionable residential town. Amalgamation with Salt River took place in 1881.”
For more about the railway, see below.
Lawrence G Green wrote this amusing
account of how the town was named in his book Grow Lovely, Growing Old:[10]
“In the early eighties came the movement to bring a number of estates into a new
municipality – Papendorp, Altona, Roodebloem, Leliebloem, and Salt River. At this period too, the Papendorp residents decided to change the name of their suburb, and were asked to vote in favour of New Brighton or Woodstock. These were hotel names. The favourite pub of the fisherman was the Woodstock, and their votes won the day. Nevertheless, the railway station remained Papendorp until 1885. When the signboard was removed and
the porters began calling out ‘Woodstock! Woodstock!’ there was a counterblast of ‘Papendorp! Papendorp!’ from the more conservative people on the platform.”
Continuing with the SESA account: “There was a fine, open beach frequented both by Capetonians and visitors, but from about 1903 a building boom set in, with industrialisation, railway development and gradually increasing congestion. Woodstock was incorporated into Cape Town in 1913. The last of Woodstock beach
disappeared when the extensions to Table Bay harbour were constructed in the early 1970s.”
In its last years the beach was increasingly polluted. As it lay so close to the
harbour (especially after the Duncan Dock was opened) it was a frequent victim of oil pollution, now a cause celebre among animal activists who rescue oiled seabirds, wash them and keep them until their feathers are again coated with water-resistant natural oils.
An amusing line from this period was this variation on an old nursery rhyme:
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.
She took him onto Woodstock beach
– en kyk hoe lyk hy nou! [11]
The city’s main fresh produce market was in Salt River for many years, but in 1961 it was moved to Epping.
Wolraad
Woltemade:
The rescuer was born in the German county (later a Fürstentum or principality) of Schaumburg-Hessen,[12] circa 1708, the son of a farmer. Like many other Germans in his day, he took service with the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) and was sent to the Cape of Good Hope.
His surname is also recorded as Woltemate or Woltemath. It seems likely that this last version is closest to the original form; it took on a Dutch form when he was employed by the VOC. His given name was likely Wohlrath.
A P J van Rensburg[13] notes that Woltemade’s wife, Janna Charlotte, apparently never came to the Cape. Christian (or Christiaan) Ludwig, the youngest son, appears to be the only member of his family who also came out.
Woltemade himself was sent to the Cape as a soldier in 1749, when he was already over 40. Between 1752 and ’55 he
was stationed as a corporal at the company’s outpost at the Steenberge, after which he returned to Europe. In 1770 he again took service with the Company as a corporal, and was stationed at Muizenberg.
From 1771 he was employed by the Company as a dairy farmer on the small farm Malta, which apparently later became part of the town of Woodstock.
Van Rensburg writes that he “also had the care of the Company’s animals, particularly of the dairy cows in its garden”, and further: “He was known for his hard work, first as a soldier and later as a keeper of animals, but in accordance with the normal pay for the lowest ranks in the Company’s service his wages never exceeded nine guilders a
month.”
After Woltemade was drowned, his body was washed up the following day and he was buried without ceremony in an
unknown grave.
In the Netherlands a newly completed ship was named De Held Woltemade (The Hero Woltemade), and his widow
received a gift of money from the Company. Van Rensburg notes:
“Although the Dutch sculptor Hendrik van Velzen had carved a representation of Woltemade’s heroic deed on the stern of De Held Woltemade in 1773, it was only during the Van Riebeeck festival in 1953 that a monument in honour of him was thought of in South Africa. Four years later Ivan Mitford-Barberton’s bronze statue of a horseman was unveiled in Pinelands, near Cape Town, and in 1973 the Post Office issued a
memorial stamp in Woltemade’s honour.”
However, Van Rensburg is mistaken. I quote from correspondence with Arthur Radburn: “The first memorial to Woltemade was apparently a column, designed by Thibault, which Gen Janssens erected on the Grand Parade about 1804. It
appears in some early 19th-century pictures of the Parade, but was later removed. As [the Parade is] never resurfaced, I suppose it was destroyed. One of the best artistic representations, to my mind, was the design on the now
defunct Woltemade Decoration for Bravery, originally (1939) the King’s Medal for Bravery. It was the winning entry in a nationwide competition to design the medal.”
Van Rensburg notes: “Of the original four railway stations called Woltemade only one still bears that name, and the
Woltemade cemetery near Cape Town is today generally known as the Maitland cemetery.”
He does not state the location of those earlier stations.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the name Woltemade is now so closely tied to Pinelands, since the statue is in the grounds of Mutual Park, headquarters of the Old Mutual, and the railway station close by, since Woltemade’s heroic deed took place on Woodstock Beach and the farm he lived on was apparently later part of Woodstock.[14]
The stations Woltemade and Mutual (close to each other on the line from Cape Town to Bellville) and Pinelands (on the Cape Flats railway line) all serve the former town of Pinelands.
Railway
development:
The railway,[15] planned to link Cape Town with Wellington, was originally intended to start at Papendorp, and the ceremony of the turning of the first sod took place on 31 March 1859 close to Fort de Knokke, part of the French Line. Governor Sir George Grey took part in the ceremony (he had arranged the date to coincide
with the monthly parade of the volunteer corps) and himself, using a silver spade, shovelled the turf into a wheelbarrow to a 21-gun salute. A crowd of 6 000 was present, despite constant rain.
Any railway construction closer to Cape Town would interfere with the military defences along the shore, and it
was not until after considerable argument between leading figures in the colony that a site for a station in Cape Town was agreed on, between Strand and Castle streets. Excavations began on 4 January 1861.
Ironically, the actual construction work on the line began a few kilometres from Wellington.
The first locomotive to run on the line went from Papendorp to Salt River on 24 October 1860, an event cheered by a crowd of several thousand.
Construction delays, and disputes between the railway company and its contracted constructor, led to violence
during October 1861 and a locomotive was derailed on the 17th. The first recorded strike for wages in South Africa took place on 2 November, when the navvies stopped work. Only on 13 February 1862 was the line opened as far as Eerste River.
On 19 December 1864 Salt River officially became a junction when the long delayed 10 km line to Wynberg was opened.
The Wynberg line had been a comic opera, being constructed by a company created for the purpose, but then operated under lease by the Wellington railway company. When the Wellington
company gave notice in 1869 that the lease would expire the following year, the Wynberg company was in trouble, as it lacked money, expertise and rolling stock and could not operate the line.
The long-term outcome was that the colonial government took over the Wellington company in 1872, creating the Cape
Government Railways, although the Wynberg company was only taken over in 1876.
The original lines were built to the British standard of 4ft 8½in (1,498 m). The CGR had been converting to 3ft
6in (1,0068 m) from 1873 onwards, in preparation for extending the existing lines inland towards Kimberley. Converting the Wynberg line to this gauge, and doubling it,
was almost complete early in 1882.
Between 1873 and ’82 trains running between Cape Town and Salt River (and further on both lines) operated for a
considerable period on two gauges.
In 1913, the same year that Woodstock was incorporated into a greatly enlarged Cape Town, the CGR was merged into the South African Railways and Harbours, together with the
harbour boards of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, plus the Natal Government Railways and the Central South African Railways.[16]
Salt River was the scene of a railway disaster on 9 June 1926 when, shortly after 5pm, a crowded train from Cape Town derailed and struck the pillars of the bridge at the station,
resulting in a considerable loss of life. Among those killed was Sir Malcolm Searle, Judge-President of the Cape.
While the reclamation of the Foreshore and the building of the Duncan Dock are stories which should properly be told under the heading of Cape Town, not Woodstock, it can be noted that a
large goods yard was erected on reclaimed land in 1952 on the seaward side of Woodstock. In the light of the Van Riebeeck tercentenary celebrations of 1953 it was named Culemborg, after
Jan van Riebeeck’s birthplace.
Through the yard an express line for passenger trains to Bellville was also laid out, with stations named Esplanade
(serving Woodstock) and Ysterplaat (which actually lies on the left bank of the Salt River, whereas Ysterplaat Air Base adjoins Brooklyn).
In 1957 there was a collision between two trains at Esplanade, in which 19 people were killed. This was in the early days of electrical switching of railway points, and it emerged that the switch used, manufactured by Siemens of Germany, was faulty in that it could inadvertently be switched the wrong way. From then on Siemens installed a safety device worldwide which averted this possibility.
Further notes from SESA state:
“Woodstock had two railway stations: the present one, being the first station from Cape Town on the main line, and a now disused station next to the Salt River power stations near the former Woodstock beach. This second Woodstock railway station served the Milnerton line, a private railway about 7 km in length controlled by Graaff’s Trust. Milnerton was the first
terminal, situated near the homestead on the old farm Jan Biesjeskraal. The line was opened to passenger and goods traffic and extended from Milnerton station (later demolished) to Ascot racecouse in 1908, but in 1916 most of the track was broken up. The remaining portion of the track, as far as Paarden
Eiland, was ceded to the State and is still operated for goods traffic.”
Since those lines were written, the bypass route through Culemborg yard has been considerably extended, taking passengers on a more northerly route with halts at Monte Vista, De Grendel,[17] Avondale and Oosterzee before rejoining the main line at Bellville.
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