Electricity was generated from a power station located on Link Street, built from mountain stone and had a prominent, tall smokestack. The tramway operation was basically a “spur” of “Cape Electric Tramways” connecting at Kloof Street in Cape Town, running up to Kloof Nek, down the full length of Camps Bay Drive to join Victoria Road, proceeding along the beachfront, through Glen Beach, then up Lower Kloof Road to finally join up with the Sea Point line.
The smokestack was demolished (and one assumes the metal tracks were lifted) in 1930 and the service was replaced with motorized buses. The power station thus became the bus shed. (A quarter of a century later it would be converted into “The Alvin” cinema and virtually another 25 years on, it became “The Theatre on the Bay”.)
Four stone cottages at the junction of Camps Bay Drive and Geneva Road were built to accommodate tramway employees – the last bus from the city was housed in the bus shed over night and became the first bus to the city the next morning.
Just after the turn of the century, an indoor swimming bath was constructed on Victoria Road opposite Lime Kiln Bay and across the road from the power station. Salt water was pumped from the sea, heated at the power station and thence into the white-tiled bath which measured 100ft by 50ft.
At approximately the same time, the Concert Hall was built designed to accommodate 1000 people. Its chief feature was the central “rotunda” which had a roof span of over 30m, a stage and dressing-rooms and on the opposite side, restaurants, bars, function rooms and offices etc.
A roller-skating rink operated within the main building as well. Later, this entire complex became the “Marine Hotel” but ultimately became better known as the “Rotunda Hotel”.
Lime Kiln Bay, opposite the indoor swimming bath, was breached with substantial concrete walls and became a tidal pool known as “The Pavilion” incorporating the pavilion “hall”, change rooms and all.
The Camps Bay Primary School was built in 1912 from mountain stone and was located on “The Drive”. It was co-educational and once pupils passed through Standard VI, they went on to high school elsewhere in Cape Town. Mainly Sea Point Boys High and Ellerslie (for girls) but Christian Brothers College, Bishops, SACS and to a lesser extent, St Georges Grammar also featured.
Under extreme pressure accommodation-wise, a High School was built higher up the mountain in 1955 but such was the pressure of numbers, that the new building was taken over and became the Primary school whilst the few senior scholars were accommodated in the old building which consequently, and on a temporary basis, became the High School. A new modern High School was eventually built on the Lower Kloof Road above Glen Beach.
The football club was started in 1923 and its strip was virtually identical to those of Aston Villa ie claret and sky-blue jerseys with white shorts. – the two clubs were apparently “twinned“.
