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Darjeeling House (originally ‘Shlobane’) Johannesburg, Gauteng Theophile SCHAERER: Architect

Date: 1910 Type: Homestead Status: Extant   Click to view large map Coordinates: 26°10'42.23" S 28°02'59.16" E Alt: 1739m

Darjeeling House is a remarkable early heritage home in Upper Houghton, close to Louis Botha Avenue, and on the borders of Parktown. It was designed by the Swiss architect, Theophile SCHAERER and built in 1910 for a Mrs H A Robinson. The house was originally named ‘Shlobane’ (meaning ‘get together’ in seSotho). The address of the home is 1 St John’s Road but there are in fact four street addresses. The house was registered in the National Register of conservation-worthy sites in 1984 but only after 1994 was it recategorised as a Provincial Heritage Resource. Ernest Ford Freeland was a Scot from Dundee, and spent a decade of his life in India as a manager of a tea plantation, the Ging Tea Estate in Darjeeling in the Himalayas in the period 1893-1904. He also spent time in Ceylon. Ernest arrived in South Africa in 1907 and initially attempted to establish a tea plantation in Natal in the Greytown area. There he met Christina Louisa Colenbrander of Natal. The Colenbrander family farm was called ‘Hummelo’ at Nonoti near Stanger. The Collenbranders were of Dutch origin and a well-known settler family. The Freeland couple married in 1910. Following a move to Johannesburg, Chrissie and Ernest first lived in Bellevue (86 Dunbar Street) where their eldest child, Patience was born. Ernest Ford Freeland established a tea and coffee importing business in Johannesburg, the Direct Tea Agency. Christina and Ernest purchased their dream house at 1 St John’s Road, Upper Houghton, in 1916. Joan Freeland, second daughter of the Freelands, was born at ‘Shlobane’ in February 1917, indicating that the Freeland parents had already purchased this early Upper Houghton house. Malcolm, the third child and only son, was also born in the family home in 1920. Here he also died, a Johannesburg record to have been born, lived and died in the same house just short of his centenary in 2020. Ernest died young in 1923 of tuberculosis. His widow Chrissie and her three children continued to live in their beautiful home. None of the Freeland siblings married. Patience, the oldest sister, was a home body, enthusiastic about fashion and very much the lady who took on the housekeeper role. Joan qualified as an industrial chemist and pursued a career as an independent woman. Their mother Chrissie died in the Upper Houghton home in 1960 and the three siblings continued to live on in the house caring for one another until their own passing. A remarkable feature of this property was the size – as it covered eight stands or erven. It had a large carefully laid out flower garden, an orchard and tennis court. There was a separate staff complex. Their home was a pocket of little England, and over the years as the home acquired heritage status. It became an expression of a fast-disappearing lifestyle. The family were all keen royalists and it was a point of pride that they had enthusiastically welcomed the Royal family to Johannesburg in 1947. Malcolm and his sister Patience were presented to Queen Elizabeth at her first royal garden party in London in 1953. Their collection of royal memorabilia, books, photographs, and magazines was vast. Darjeeling, in addition to its original billiard room (later a dining room), had a fine wooden panelled library. The family were collectors of antiques, hunting trophies (these animals had been shot by their mother, Christina Louisa), fine clothes and good books. They made their own home-made jam from plums picked from their garden. Water saving was very important, and they had eight rain barrels. They kept abreast of the world with subscriptions to newspapers and to a variety of other travel, fashion and professional journals and magazines. In the 1980s, the large old properties of this corner of Upper Houghton, lying between Louis Botha Avenue and Carse o’Gowrie Street, had become prime targets for developers as detached, ageing, big homes, often on an acre of land, were an appealing property proposition. In the 1980s, Sanlam bought up these homes with an eye on demolition, rezoning and redevelopment. Consolidation of stands followed and the bulldozers arrived to flatten all. However, the Freeland family resisted the scheme, fought big business and the loss of their home. They succeeded and Darjeeling was rather stranded as an island and sole survivor of an upper-class somewhat colonial way of life in a very different Johannesburg. They were witness to the demolitions around them that saw old homes give way to the Isle of Houghton residential development and the office park. They remained to live out their lives in their prize – their beloved family home. Ultimately, they hoped their home would become a museum, but this was not to be. [Extracted and edited from the obituary for Malcolm FREELAND by Kathy Munro on the The Heritage Portal, May 6, 2024.]