History in Colour: St Mary’s Cathedral, Cape Town

A snapshot from the past colourised exclusively for The Southern Cross – 

Cape Town’s St Mary’s cathedral, mother church of South Africa, was consecrated 170 years ago, on April 28, 1851, ten years after Bishop Patrick Raymund Griffith laid the foundation stone.

The cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady of the Flight Into Egypt, is seen here around 1870, before the belltower was built.

Two successive buildings stood next to it; the second was torn down in 1938.

In 1870, the parliamentary buildings on the other side of Stal Plein did not exist yet, though Tuynhuis had already stood there since 1682. Construction for the old Assembly Building began in 1875.

The cathedral was built, after a design by German architect Carl Otto Hager, on land that was Wachtenburg Garden and a piece of ground in front known as Tanner’s Square.

Over time, the block behind the cathedral was bought by Bishop Griffith’s fellow Dominicans for the construction of schools — most of these buildings are still in Catholic hands.

The present chancery, formerly the private Union Jack Club and located in the area behind the house on the right, was bought in the mid-1950s.

History in Colour was published in the April 2021 issue of The Southern Cross magazine

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