Mount Nelson

Verandah at the Mount Nelson

1488:    The first European to reach the Cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias.
Dias named it the ‘Cape of Storms’ (Cabo das Tormentas). The Cape was later renamed by John II of Portugal as ‘Cape of Good Hope’ (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East.
1652:    The first Dutch settled at the Cape.
1652:    Set in nine acres of lush gardens on the lower slopes of Table Mountain (so named because its top is so flat that voluminous clouds frequently flow over it, creating a tablecloth effect), the Mount Nelson stands in gardens established in the mid of the 17 century by the country’s founder, Dutchman Jan Van Riebeeck.
1795:    During the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch Republic was occupied by the French. The United Kingdom invaded and occupied the Dutch Cape Colony that same year, relinquished control of the territory in 1803, only to return and reoccupy the Cape in 1806.
1805:    Battle of Trafalgar.

Historic view of the restaurant at the Mount Nelson.

1806:    In memorial of the hero of Trafalgar, William Mauldin, the owner of the land in the table valley where the hotel stands today, called his estate Mount Nelson. The name appeared for the first time in the Cape Town Gazette and African Adviser on 1 August 1806.
1814:    The South African territory was ceded to the British in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty and was thereafter administered as the Cape Colony.
1869:    The Suez Canal opened, creating a navigable passage for steam ships between the Far East and the Mediterranean.
Overnight, the route around the Cape of Good Hope paled in comparison to the less time consuming Canal. The brief and glorious reign of the tea clippers was over, the Cutty Sark (1869), became one of the last tea clippers to be constructed.
1876:    With the Suez Canal in place, shipping between Europe and the Cape concentrated on mail, provisions and passengers.
Two competitors, the Union Line and the Castle Shipping Line tried to outdo each other by sailing as fast as possible and employing larger and more luxurious steamers. Bets were placed on the different mail ships.
1880:    During the ‘80s, the prestige of Cape Town as a great host, ‘The Tavern of the Seas’, was undisputed. So was its bad reputation concerning its hotels: ‘The very best hotel in Cape Town would disgrace the meanest, dirtiest, most insanitary village in England,’ wrote William Clark Russell, England’s famous nautical novelist.
Finally, Sir Henry Loch, Governor of the Cape colony and British High Commissioner of South Africa declared in 1890 that the city is in dire need of superior hotel accommodation.
1890:    Under the farsighted leadership of Castle Line chairman Donald Currie the Cape Land Company, a Castle Line subsidiary, purchased the Mount Nelson estate, with the intention to build a hotel to accommodate their passengers in style. The hotel in this most airy and healthy part of Cape Town should surpass all international standards. Legal affairs delayed the development until 1897.
1894:    The Union Line opened the luxurious Grand Hotel in Cape Town. It was considered the most sumptuous hotel South of the equator, with a French chef, lifts and electric light – luxury unseen before at the Cape.
1897:    Cape Land Company, the owner of the Mount Nelson estate, transferred the property to its hotel subsidiary African Lands and Hotel Limited. The Mount Nelson Hotel was built.    Designed by London architects Dunn and Watson, the new Mount Nelson Hotel was filled with rich and comfortable furnishings from Europe.
Herbert Baker was involved, but the only building the ‘architect of South Africa’ built at the Mount Nelson was a laundry department.

1899:    On 1 March 1899, the Mount Nelson Hotel opened for business.

‘London, the capital of the world, would not be able to produce anything superior.’
The Cape Times, 3 March 1899

1899:    Only a few months after its opening the hotel became the inofficial headquarters of the Second Boer War, which broke out in October 1899. On 17 January 1900, Lord Kitchener and Field Marshall Lord Frederick Sleigh Roberts made the Mount Nelson their base.
1900:    The Union Line and Castle Shipping Line merged, creating the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company Ltd, with a well accorded timetable and interchangeable tickets.
1910:    The Cape Colony was incorporated into the independent Union of South Africa (now known as the Republic of South Africa).
1920s:    After World War I, the cream of the British society came every year with the mailships, sometimes leaving crates of luggage at the hotel for the next winter. One even kept a Rolls Royce in a nearby garage.
1921:    The side wings were extended, drawings by Herbert Baker’s partners Kendall and Morris.
1924:    Kendall and Morris planned the monumental gateway portico and the Palm Avenue (57 Canary Island Palms) to Mount Nelson, a new Cape Town landmark.
1939–1945:    During World War II, various international artists arrived in Cape Town to entertain the troops and civilians. The arrival of Englands playwright, singer and actor Noël Coward (‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’) saw some 30,000 people (below) greeting him upon arrival. He spent 19 days at the Mount Nelson.
1947:    King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, arrived for a three month visit to the countries of Southern Africa.
1958:    A heated swimming pool along with a bar and a restaurant in a new extension became an additional attraction of the hotel.
1964:    The entrance extension was built.
1967:    The worlds’s first human to human heart transplant was performed in Cape Town by Christiaan Barnard.
1968:    A banqueting room for up to 500 people, the Grill Room (as à la carte restaurant) and The Lord Nelson Bar opened for business. Linda of London (at the hotel) became the most popular hairdressing salon of Cape Town. A three-level car park replaced the 21 old lock-up garages.
1986:    Mrs Theresa Cohen, the longest staying guest of the Mount Nelson, died after having lived 34 years at the hotel.
1988:    Orient-Express Hotels Ltd, the luxury hotel company and sophisticated adventure travel operator, added the (151 bedrooms and suites) Mount Nelson Hotel to its portfolio.
Orient Express owner James Sherwood had the habit of always booking into the best hotel in town – a method he describes as ‘a long and patient courtship’.
1994:    The end of apartheid in South Africa prompted a dramatic increase in tourism. To meet the growing demand the Mount Nelson acquired four adjacent historic buildings, which were converted into sixty-four garden suites, bringing the total to 226 room keys. Now two heated pools serve the hotel.
1996:    The ‘Cape Colony Restaurant’ opened, decorated in colonial style with handsome murals by artist Simon Brady, serving Afro-fusion food.
2000s:    Leading executive chefs like Garth Stroebel, followed by Rudi Liebenberg, earn the hotel the reputation of being a gourmet’s temple. The new ‘Planet’ restaurant is featured among the best restaurants in the world, a recognition for its creative cooking.
The Mount Nelson Bar has been renamed Planet Bar and moved to its new location, now including parts of the terrace, a change most welcome by young Capetonians.
2014:    Orient-Express Hotels, which owns and operates 45 luxury hotels, trains, river cruises and New York’s City’s 21 restaurant, rebranded all its holdings except the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. The new group name is Belmond.

Mount Nelson Hotel has also established itself as one of the city’s most socially conscious hotels by incorporating a series of environmentally savvy initiatives and receiving accreditation with The Heritage Environmental Rating Programme. The hotel has also been instrumental in helping to establish The Hotels Housing Trust – a charitable initiative which facilitates fundraising for the construction of homes in impoverished local communities.

Mount Nelson Hotel’s management celebrated the end of the First World War by decorating the hotel with a cheerful coat of pink paint. The trend towards pink hotels was popular throughout Europe for the next few decades, and so it was that Mount Nelson Hotel retained her pink blush, and is still known as ‘Cape Town’s famous pink hotel’.

A few months before his untimely death John Lennon stayed at Mount Nelson Hotel under the pseudonym ‘Mr Greenwood’. He is said to have been exceptionally tidy (he even made his own bed), he meditated on Table Mountain, spoke to his wife Yoko Ono regularly, and planned to bring her to stay at the hotel the following year.

1900-1902: During the Boer War the Mount Nelson Hotel served as the headquarters of the ‘imperial war machine’, as Elaine Hurford wrote.

If a British soldier residing at Mount Nelson Hotel during the South African War, behaved irresponsibly, he would be sent to work in the military horse stables at Stellenbosch, a town on in the outlying Cape Winelands area. The word ‘Stellenbosch’ subsequently found its way into the Oxford Dictionary as a passive verb meaning ‘to be relegated, as the result of incompetence, to a position in which little harm can be done’. 

Lady Jennie Churchill remembered ‘eating strawberries and walking in the pretty garden’, while her son Winston wrote his reports for the Morning Post in the seclusion of his luxury suite after his spectacular escape from Pretoria’s Prisoner of War Camp. He said of the hotel: ‘It is the most excellent and well-appointed establishment which may be thoroughly appreciated after a sea voyage’.

Officers only were allowed at the hotel at the time, but a growing group of journalists, sightseers, adventurers, wives, sweethearts and all sorts of camp followers roamed the grounds of the hotel.

Sarah Wilson, the youngest daughter of John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough and the world’s first female war correspondent, employed by the Daily Mail, enjoyed her peaceful suite after dreadful days and endless nights in the field.

Cecil Rhodes entertained here, H G Wells arrived and so did Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, who volunteered to join the army. Kitchener had to turn the offer of the 40-years old author down: he was too old. Finally Doyle served in a field hospital. He again put up at the Mount Nelson before returning to England. Here he started writing his books on the Boer War.

In her novel ‘A Sport of Nature’ (Bloomsbury), South African Literature Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer mentions the Mount Nelson Hotel. The line of a direct speech by one of her characters goes:
‘The farmers and businessmen and doctors and lawyers in parliament, sitting in that lovely old building at the Cape Town Gardens under the Mount Nelson Hotel where I had such a good time as a kid, staying there with my aunt.’
 

Sandro Fabris
Michael Pownall
Patrick Elsmie