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Date: 1910 Client: Graaff Type: Swimming Baths Style: Utilitarian : Edwardian Status: Demolished 2005   Click to view large map Coordinates: 33°54'46.16" S 18°23'15.46" E Alt: 2m

This rock pool was created when rock was excavated for the nearby railway line foundations. Marais, a businessman in the wine trade, built the pool in 1910 for his paralysed wife who was bathed in the ocean daily. A tunnel was built from Marais' manor house, Bordeaux, under the public road to the pool so that his wife might be brought to the pool unseen by the public. In the 1920s the mansion across Beach Road was sold to Sir Jacobus Arnoldus Combrinck Graaff. He acquired the exclusive use of the pool, allowing his family to swim without mixing with the general public, it then being known as Below Bordeaux. He subsequently granted the pool to the public in 1929, and hence the reason it became known as Graaff’s Pool. Although publicly accessible the pool was walled off with only its western side open to the ocean thereby allowing bathers to swim in the nude. In the 70s it became a male only nude swimming pool. However, after 1994, the “men only” signs came down and it became an area which could be utilised by both men and women. In the late 1980s through to the early 2000s the pool was known as a popular hangout for the city's gay community. Due to concerns with the location becoming a crime hot spot in the 1990s it was closed at sunset every night. In 2005 the City of Cape Town demolished the privacy screen wall as a measure to combat the criminal activities associated with the place.