5. Graaf's Pool
The first pool from the north along the Atlantic coastline of Cape Town is a derelict site known as Graaf's Pool.
Graaf's pool has a unique place in the story of the South African tidal pool for all the fuss it has caused. The pool was built in 1910 to accommodate the needs of a paralysed woman who lived in a mansion right behind the pool. It featured a tunnel for access under the beach road, and a wall to shield the users from view. After her, the mansion and the pool were owned by a politician named Graaff, after whom the pool was named, and who later bequeathed the pool to the City of Cape Town.
It soon became a popular hangout spot for gay men, who congregated behind the wall and swam in the nude. After a number of years, some of the locals objected to this practice, and the wall was demolished in 2005. The pool was demolished in 2005, although some features have survived in 2026.
Graaff's Pool cut down to size
2005-06-09 21:59
Cape Town - Nudie landmark Graaff's Pool - labelled by a city councillor as a venue where sex was for sale, drugs were peddled and the area used as a toilet - is almost gone.
A huge bulldozer started on Thursday with the destruction of the concrete wall around the well-known pool on the Sea Point promenade.
For councillor J P Smith, representing Sea Point and Green Point and who was there to monitor the proceedings, it was the end of a three-year campaign.
He said: "We can now make an end to the abuse of Graaff's Pool."
Smith approached the council three years ago with a deposition to do away with the concrete wall protecting the historic Graaff's Pool from prying eyes on land.
He was supported by the Sea Point Ratepayers' Association, as well as the area's community policing forum.
Tunnel under the street
Smith said: "It took us a long time to weigh up the pros and cons of this move and we eventually decided the demolition of the wall was justified.
"It no longer serves any useful purpose for the community."
The pool dates from the period when the former politician and leader of the opposition, Sir de Villiers Graaff and his family had a home across the street in Beach Road.
It was even possible for them to walk along a tunnel underneath the street to the pool where bathing was strictly in the nude.
The tunnel entrance can still be seen today.
In later years the family donated the pool to the city council.
Initially, only men were allowed to use it and it was only much later that women were allowed to use it.
'A hotspot for crime'
According to Smith, the sea took its toll through the years and storm damage caused cracks in the wall and even took away sections of concrete.
Smith said: "In time, it became a hotspot for crime.
"Condoms and stolen property were found there regularly and rent boys also used the place as a hangout."
The Western Cape heritage watchdog initially gave permission for the demolition of the wall to a height of one metre.
However, Smith is presenting a further deposition to break the wall down to the rock surface and have the area restored to its original state.
https://www.news24.com/graaffs-pool-cut-down-to-size-20050609
A further story in the area flourishes as steadily as the legendary gaze of the ‘Lady of Bordeaux’ herself. In 1898, a villa named Bordeaux was built on Sea Point’s Beach Road by Mr Pieter Marais, a wealthy businessman who had ties to the wine industry. His wife, the ‘Lady of Bordeaux’, was wheelchair-bound and would watch passers-by from the top windows of the Villa Bordeaux.
During the 1920s social stigmas about disability abounded and as such, Mr Marais constructed a pathway from the villa straight over the rocks to a private pool with a wall erected in front of it for private wheelchair access for his wife.
There she would bathe, concealed behind the wall, away from prying eyes. When the family fell on hard times, they sold the villa to Mr Jacobus Graaff. The Graaff family would walk from their palatial villa to the pool in their silks, without having to interact with common society, and so the pool was named Graaff’s Pool.
The story of the ‘Lady of Bordeaux’ has been attached to a mysterious, inaccessible tunnel for years where it is supposed that family members accessed the pool via the tunnel.
One can still view the remnants of the blocked tunnel and view the old path to the demolished pool. Eventually, the bathing area was opened to the public in 1929 but its slow demise started in 1995 when the gates were shut at sunset, to control anti-social activities there. Its final demolition in 2005 had a powerfully positive impact on the general upliftment of the area.
The Villa Bordeaux was converted into a hotel and in 1959, just one year after Winchester Mansions inception, it was demolished to make way for what is today Sea Point’s largest block of beachfront flats, aptly named, Bordeaux.
BELOW BORDEAUX
Hidden Histories in Sea Point
by A Malan
The story of a lady in a wheelchair has been attached to the mysterious, inaccessible tunnel for years. Inherited as folklore in the area, it has been retold and reshaped countless times.
Exactly how much is truth and how much fantasy is not as important as the existence of the story itself, so tightly bound to these hidden and strange spaces.
The tunnel and pool are often thought to have been built by Mr Jacobus Graaff, after whom the pool now takes its name. And it is described so in Lawrence G. Green's I Heard the Old Man Say, a key source of histories written about the Sea Point area. It was built, the story goes, so that the wealthy Graaff family could walk down, in silks, from their palatial villa to bathe in the ocean without having to interact with common members of society. No doubt at one point this could have been the case, but pool is recorded as being in existence as far back as 1910.
A more plausible account denies that the tunnel ever reached the villa in Bordeaux. Cape Argus journalist John De Nobrega wrote an attempted debunking of the tunnel story in 1966. The Tunnel that Never Was claims that the partially covered archway served as a subway for the old rail line and terminated on the other side of the tracks.
The Lady, however, almost certainly did exist, and was certainly the wife of Mr Pieter Marais. Marais, a prominent member of the Round Church in Sea Point, was a wealthy man with ties to the wine industry. He is credited with building the mansion at Villa Bordeaux in 1903 and naming it after a popular wine farming region in France.
Lady Marais fell into poor health following the death of her only child shortly after childbirth. Marischal Murray in Under Lion's Head writes the following:
"Mrs Marais, for some years, remained in poor health. Her husband now arranged for an approach to be made from the front gates of Bordeaux, leading down to the small pool in the rocks below Bordeaux. Such stones as could be removed were carted away, and during the hot weather the invalid was periodically wheeled down to have a sea-water bath."
In conclusion, the accompanying photograph shows Mr and Mrs Marais, seated. A black object, perhaps handlebars, appears from between the Lady's knees. A curious shadow to Pieter's left seems, too, to have handles extending in front of the standing lady's waist. Lastly, while one mystery is solved, three others arrive - whose are these children?
One can only declare that the value of this story is housed in the power of the unknown.
There is a sense of ambition and determination against nature pervading the design of Graaff’s Pool. Jacobus Graaff served in the 1920's as a Minister of Public Works, Posts and Telegraphs. Here, he would have overseen and maintained vast developments in the Province. His old brother, Sir David Pieter de Villiers Graaff, previously in the same Cabinet position, had been involved in realising Cape Town's first electric power station at Molteno Reservoir, the Sea Point Sea Wall, and with haunting similarity, Cape Town's pier extending from Adderly street into the bay. Although physically smaller, Graaff’s Pool was conceived and built in the same era as these large-scale public amenities. And consequently, imbued with a similar sense of boldness.
https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/5947/thesis_com_20uu_malan_a.pdf?sequence=1
