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The Lion’s Gate

VISITORS TO CAPE TOWN may be surprised that, given the beauty and multiplicity of animals in the vicinity, the ‘Mother City’ has no zoo. There is actually a popular zoo at Tygerberg, twenty-four miles from Cape Town and less than ten miles from Stellenbosch, which is the only zoo in the province. But centuries ago — around 1700 — a ‘menagerie’ was founded in the Company’s Gardens in Cape Town which survived for over a hundred years.

François Valentijn, in his visit of 1714, noted the menagerie boasted a pair of ‘rheen’ or ‘rheebokken’ (probably kudu), a black rhinoceros, an eland, a ‘rossen bok’ (possibly a hartebeest), a hippopotamus, two lions, and a zebra. In the 1770s, the Swede Anders Sparrman noted the presence of many springbok, a warthog, some ostriches, and even a cassowary. The selection varied widely through the years, and given Cape Town’s status as ‘The Tavern of the Seas’ central to the European route to the Indies and the Far East, the zoo included not only African beasts but also some (like the Papuan cassowary) brought from the Orient.

In 1777, the notorious rake William Hickey ventured to extoll it as “the finest menagerie in the world, in which are collected the most extraordinary animals and birds of every quarter of the globe”. Less than fifteen years later, however, Lt. George Tobin of the Royal Navy described it as “a menagerie of some extent. It was but poorly supplied, there being but a few ostriches and some different kinds of deer.” Decades later, in February 1825, a traveller noted the menagerie in the pages of the Montly Magazine of London:

At the end of the Grand Walk, which is nearly three-quarters of a mile long, is the Company’s Menagerie, which is worth seeing, on account of a good-natured old lion, supposed to be the largest ever taken into captivity, and a tiger of immense size and power; there are several other specimens of African animals: but those are infinitely the largest of their species I ever saw—we have nothing that comes near them in England.

A spiritually inclined passer-through, the Rev. Henry Martyn, Chaplain to the Honourable East India Company, stated in 1832 that the “lion and a lioness, amongst the beasts, and the ostrich, led my thoughts very strongly to admire and glorify the power of the great Creator.” It was around that time that Sir Benjamin d’Urban, Governor of the Cape, granted land next to the menagerie for the erection of a building for the South African College, the germ of what would become the University of Cape Town. This was the beginning of what is now called the Hiddingh campus of UCT, the institution’s first home which continues alongside the main campus built on the Rhodes estate on the slopes of Devil’s Peak. The menagerie was shut in 1838 and the first building of the proto-UCT went up the next year in an exotic Egyptian Revival style.

The lion gates, however, are from earlier. They were built in 1805, probably by Thibault, with the lions & lionesses sculpted by the architect’s frequent collaborator Anton Anreith, also responsible for the magnificent pulpit in the Groote Kerk. The lionesses on the UCT side are original but the lions on the other side, curiously, were removed in 1873. In 1958 they were restored when Ivan Mitford-Barberton — arguably South Africa’s greatest sculptor after Anreith — created new beasts for the old perches. The gates are still there if you walk up the Government Avenue that bisects the Company’s Gardens, beautiful in the eye of this beholder in their immaculate, white, classical elegance.

Published at 8:02 pm on Sunday 8 August 2010. Categories: Architecture Cape Town Featured South Africa Tags: , , .
Comments

Andrew …

Thanks for that evocative transportation through the Company’s Gardens; always a favourite for me when in Die Moederstad. I may be there this October to attend a friend’s wedding. Finger’s crossed that I can make it.

Your above description reminded me of an excellent book that I first saw in the library of the magnificent Cape Heritage Hotel on Bree Street (you might know this building as it was once a Dutch merchant’s house in the 18th century). It was by chance that I found a copy up the way a bit at Select Books on Long Street:

Gentleman’s Walk – Hymen W. J. Picard, C. Struik (Pty.) Ltd., Cape Town, 1968.

This what the Mayor of Cape Town at the time (Gerald Ferry) wrote at the beginning the book:

“Since our early days, from time to time, many outstanding books have been written about life in Cape Town. Now, Mr. Picard has written the fascinating story of its streets, its lanes and its squares. Historical facts are interwoven with delightful glimpses in the past. All the grave and charm of old Cape Town is there. We are tol much that is amusing and much too of the fears and trepidations which beset the citizens in these bygone days.”

A wonderful book with wonderful sketches, drawings, maps, and paintings; it too has transported me back.

Mooi bly …

— Dave Cooper 10 Aug 2010 10:39 am

Yes! I have gone through that book many a time in the Stellenbosch university library.

It is so irritating to be separated from all those interesting books about Cape Town & the Cape! Once I get myself firmly established back the other side of the Ocean I will have to start expanding my scandalously paltry collection once again. Needless to say, all the best titles are out of print.

— Andrew Cusack 10 Aug 2010 11:47 am

Hi Andrew

Along with the Lions Anton Anreith apparentlyalso sculpted a Ape
for the entrance of the menagerie. I found a photo of the wax model he made, before he did the sculpture, in the national archives.
Do you have any idea what they might have done with the sculptures or
the models? Is it something that would have been moved to the Museum?

Thanks
Werner

— Werner Ryke 5 Jun 2013 11:34 am
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