The River Club forms part of the wider Two Rivers Urban Park (TRUP) and represents a microcosm of Cape history. It reflects the pattern of South Africa’s social, architectural and political history spanning across the pre-colonial, colonial, apartheid and more recent history.

The Two Rivers Urban Park landscape has high cultural values of historical, social, aesthetic, architectural, scientific and environmental significances. It contributes to an understanding of past attitudes, beliefs, uses, events, persons, periods, techniques and design. It has associated links with past events, persons, uses, community memory, identity and oral history. It possesses a strong sense of place.

The Two Rivers Urban Park landscape is a complex composite of natural, cultivated and built landscape elements. It is a cultural landscape, transformed by thousands of years of settlement history. The landscape expresses both artistic and innovative qualities in terms of its natural setting, architecture and planting patterns. It also has narrative qualities, possessing a rich layering of physical evidence brought alive by the oral histories of the people who lived and worked in institutions, amongst other things, the Valkenberg Hospital and the South African Astronomical Observatory. Different historical narratives create a story of pioneering and philanthropy, social reform and identity, self-sufficiency, farming and institutionalization.

The Two Rivers Urban Park possesses many distinctive and interrelated precincts which clearly demonstrates or are strongly associated with its various historical roles and uses as a place for indigenous hunter-gatherers, grazing grounds for herders, colonial farms, scientific research, reformatory and hospitals.

Declaration:

In terms of Section 29(1)(a) of the National Heritage Resources Act, No. 25 of 1999, Heritage Western Cape, which is the provincial heritage resources authority for the Western Cape province, hereby provisionally protects the area known as Erf 151832, the River Club, Observatory, fully described in the schedule below for a maximum period of two years from the publication of this notice.

Schedule:

Erf 151832, the River Club, Corner Liesbeek Parkway and Observatory Road, Observatory, Cape Town, bounded by Liesbeek Parkway, Observatory Road and the Liesbeek River, Observatory, and as shown on the map above.

Published in the Western Cape Provincial Gazette on 20 April 2018