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 Soon after, the Cape of Good Hope passed into the hands of the
British.42 General Janssens rode out with all the honours of war, the
Waldeck Regiment was sent back to Cape Town in disgrace, and the
Camps Bay defences lost their brief place in history. The battery in ‘Camps
Bay’ (no longer called ‘De Baai van Von Kamptz’) and the transitory
fortification in the kloof between Table Mountain and Lion’s Head were
included in an inventory of the fortifications of the Cape made for the
Second British occupation.
In 1807 the Earl of Caledon was sent out to the Cape, accompanied by
Andrew Barnard. Unfortunately Barnard died before his wife, Lady Anne,
could join him again. Caledon moved into the only house in Camps Bay,
the dilapidated farmhouse which had originally been the home of J.J.
Wernich and then of Von Kamptz, but he found it too isolated and
communication with his offices in town too difficult so he moved to Cape
Town. The area was still untouched and undeveloped and few ventured
there. It was so secluded that the British Government used it in 1812 as
an isolation camp for smallpox patients.
The botanist William Burchell who visited two years before reported
that there was only one house in Camps Bay and it was very dilapidated
and “the path down towards Camps Bay (was) said to be more difficult
and seldom used except by slaves in search of firewood.”43 There must
have been some others who used it because a Mr Schmidt was reported to
have had a farm on the Kloof between Lion’s Head and Table Mountain in
1818. Visitors to his farm often paused on the kloof near the military
block house to admire the Town below nestling under the mountain and
Jan Carel Horak, a butcher of 33 Plein Street, the director of the Shambles
(butcher’s slaughterhouse) who later became a member of the Burgher
Senate, probably stored his meat on the hoof up there, an easy ride from
the land he had bought in Sea Point in 1813.
Horak was granted title to the Roodekrantz estate on perpetual quitrent
tenure on 4 April 1814; the Deeds Office files of the previous year mention
a circular house there.47 There was a building on the land, the round
guardhouse built in 1786 to protect the backdoor approach to Cape Town
and Horak probably built onto this.
Horak’s land was near to the Government land in Camps Bay. The
British Government had taken over the Dutch properties which included
the land and farmhouse bought from von Kamptz. Caledon would
occasionally lend the shabby farm house to friends. Despite its condition,
the beauty of the site must have been a considerable attraction. Sir John
Cradock also let it during his term of duty between 1811 and 1814. Horak
successfully petitioned Cradock for permission to continue to keep an eye
on the Governor’s property as superintendent as he had done when
Caledon had been governor. It was a convenient appointment for Horak
because the stable and kraal he had built were nearby, however he
prudently moved away for a while when the smallpox patients were his
neighbours. In 1819 the Rev. Mr. Campbell described his visit to Horak’s
nearby house which was “built in the form of a circle.”48 Fifteen feet in
diameter, Horak’s round house was built of wood and contained four gun
cupboards. Camps Bay
villas
In 1814 General Lord Charles Henry Somerset, second son of the 5th
Duke of Beaufort, became the new Governor of the Cape and he remained
until 1826. He has been described49 as a “hard-living, hard-hunting squire
of an overbearing disposition, but with a distinct sense of responsibility
towards the country which he had been sent to govern. He had little tact
and made many enemies.” He was extravagant and liked to live as a Lord
should live; for example, he considered the small Government House in
the Gardens to be no larger than a dog kennel so added on a ballroom.
As well as a ballroom, he also felt the need for a weekend retreat and
decided that Camps Bay would be an ideal spot although Lord Caledon’s
shabby farmhouse was really not good enough for a descendant of King
Edward lll. Somerset enjoyed hunting and there was plenty of game in the
area, and good riding across the fields in invigorating air with a beautiful
view of the sea as a bonus and he decided that Horak’s round house would
make a perfect shooting lodge.
Somerset believed that Camps Bay was a likely landing-place for enemy
ships so for security reasons he extended the guardhouse behind the
battery and had the road repaired. While the government workmen were
busy with the guardhouse, Somerset felt it prudent to use the builders to
enlarge the farmhouse and the Round House at the same time for his own
needs. For these alterations as well as others at his home in Newlands
House, Somerset employed the services of the English informer, William
Jones, the notorious ‘Oliver the Spy’.
SOMERSET’S ARCHITECT - OLIVER THE SPY
 William Jones and his wife and child had been smuggled out of England in
1819 by the Under-Secretary Henry Goulburn with a letter of
recommendation to Somerset asking him to make a grant of land to Jones
“whose object in proceeding to the Cape of Good Hope was to settle in the
country.”51 In England Jones had become notorious and for years afterwards
was used as a bogey-man for naughty children. Born in 1776, and apprenticed
to a carpenter, he had been acquitted of trying to defraud another carpenter.
He later became an accountant to a London builder through whom he met
some Radical conspirators who were planning treason. Scared by his previous
brush with the law, he offered to become an informer and was sent to Leeds
to investigate the political feelings there. He pretended to be a parliamentary
reformer and persuaded the leaders to stage a bloodless revolution promising
them help from London. When the plotters were arrested after industrial
disturbance in the Midlands, they claimed that Oliver had duped them and
had instigated the whole thing. The House of Commons insisted that Jones
was a respectable patriotic builder and that prior information about political
unrest was vital for state security.
Lord Charles was away when Jones arrived in the Cape with his letter of
recommendation but, a trained draughtsman, Jones started working as a
surveyor, and soon gained a good reputation for his knowledge of
construction. On Somerset’s return, he
ignored the newcomer at first because he was
angry with the Acting Governor, Sir Rufane
Donkin. When Jones managed to present his
letter of recommendation, Somerset decided
to get him to rebuild his homes in the Cape
to make these more fitting for someone of his
social standing. Even though Goulburn had
written that Jones was no architect but
merely a builder, Somerset appointed him
Inspector of Government Buildings a month
after his return. It was rumoured that Somerset also used him as a spy.
The extra storey Jones52 had built onto Somerset’s country residence,
Newlands House, collapsed in a storm in 1819. This mishap did not deter
Somerset who embarked on ambitious plans for Jones to renovate the
Government Buildings in Camps Bay after another storm in 1822.
Jones prepared plans to alter the Government Buildings at Camps Bay
extensively. The whole exercise was later condemned by a Commission of
Inquiry as a waste of public money. After an outcry, Somerset decided to make
Jones the scapegoat for the expense that his elaborate building projects had
entailed and blamed him for having “neglected to keep his accounts in the
form required (which) renders it impossible to ascertain with precision the
exact expense of each distinct service.” In the days before transparency and
accountability were expected of rulers, creative accountancy practices made
convenient smokescreens to cover extravagant expenditure of government
income. Somerset wrote that although Jones was a good builder he could not
be regarded as a responsible officer to superintend all buildings. On 31 July
1825 Jones was discharged from the post of Inspector of Government
Buildings. Justice having been seen to be done, Somerset then appointed Jones
to a newly created post as the Government Overseer of Works.
No part of this
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of both the publisher and Holiday Rentals in Cape Town
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