The oldest buildings on the False Bay coast were built in the late Victorian and Edwardian era, when Cape Town's growing middle class discovered the pleasures of the seaside and the railway made the southern suburbs accessible. St James was one of the first of these resort towns: a stretch of coastline between the railway and the ocean, close enough to the city to commute but distant enough to feel like an escape.
Long Cottage is part of that history. The bones of the building are Victorian, the proportions, the stoep, the way the rooms open onto each other. The garden is old. The trees are the kind that take decades to grow. The wide floorboards have been walked on by many different kinds of lives, and they show it, in the good way.
The oldest building on the street. It has the kind of solidity that modern construction can't manufacture, the quiet authority of something that was built to last.
The decisions made
Restoring a heritage building is an exercise in restraint. The temptation is always to improve, to modernise, to update, to smooth away the evidence of age. The better instinct is to listen to what's already there and respond to it honestly.
The decisions made at Long Cottage lean toward the latter. The building still feels like what it is: an old house on the South African coast. The kitchens work. The outdoor shower works. The garden has been tended without being manicured. The stoep is furnished for sitting on for long periods, which is its purpose.
Longboard and The Nook
Longboard Cottage and The Nook are more recent in character, built for the way people live now rather than the way they lived then, with terraces that catch the morning and materials that make sense for a coastal climate. But they share the same basic philosophy: they are homes first, accommodation second. They contain the things that make a day comfortable and not very much else.
The Nook was designed with privacy in mind, a single private entrance, its own bathroom, room for two. Attached to Longboard Cottage on the same property, but entirely self-contained. It works best for people who want intimacy and quiet access to the water.
On sharing
The decision to open the homes to guests was not complicated, in the end. They were well-used already, by family, by friends, by the kind of extended community that accumulates around a surf break and a good stoep. Opening them to people who were less personally known felt like an extension of something that was already happening.
What we hope people find when they arrive is simply what we find when we're here: the ocean, the mountains, the good light, and the particular quality of time that this corner of False Bay seems to produce in people. Slower. Fuller. Less urgent.
Welcome. Come in. The stoep is round the side.
