Imagining the past

As you leave Fish Hoek Beach you cross the railway line, and on your left is the South African Navy's "WO's, CPO's and PO's Mess". This is the site of Fish Hoek's original farm homestead that was built, it is thought, in the nineteenth century by one of the owners of the "Vischhoek loan place"or farm, a Thomas Palmer, who bought it in 1822 and then went insolvent, after which the farm was subdivided into three. Several subdivisions later it was bought by the formidable Hester de Villiers, who was the owner when this photo was taken in the early twentieth century. The scar made by the stone quarry (opened in 1896) in the hill above can be seen even to this day. Today, a hundred years later. The blue arrow marks the spot of the naval mess, hidden behind the ugly beach buildings.