By Eamonn Ryan | All photos by Eamonn Ryan
The Lindfield Victorian House Museum is a privately owned and managed museum, full of Victorian era items, including plumbing items and original product catalogues dating back to around 1900. It was originally an upper middle-class home in Auckland Park, which at that time was a country area well outside the wild mining town of Johannesburg. This is the second in a two-part series.
Also read: Turn of century plumbing at the Linfield Victorian House Museum: Part 1
MacFarlane’s Castings was fifirst published in 1882.
“The toilet is the original 1935 cistern with the wooden seat dating from about 1900.” Some of the mechanisms of the cistern have had to be replaced as the house is not just a museum but Ms Love still lives in it and therefore the plumbing and electrical systems have to be functional. No doubt there is a geyser hidden away somewhere, but the original coal-fired oven (early 1900s) remains in the kitchen, with outlets still in evidence and which used to provide the home with hot water via a boiler.
Katharine Love in her distinctive parlour maid
attire, photographed some time after the
2019 Rugby World Cup
This 1935 toilet’s wooden seat dates from 1900.
The stove was brought from the original home that Ms Love was brought up in, a mere one block away, before moving to the current house in 1967. The former house was built in 1902 but has since been demolished after being expropriated by the Rand Afrikaans University (now UJ). Almost all the similar homes in Auckland Park have been fully modernised. All the contents were brought across from her early home, or have since been acquired.
These utensils were the Victorian version of running hot water.
The taps in the kitchen are relatively modern from the 1960s, and Ms Love has been unable to authenticate them with a pair of old taps: she only has singles. Many such products were ordered from a MacFarlane’s Castings catalogue, the 7th edition of which came out in 1882, and was imported from Britain.
In the bedroom is an unplumbed hip bath with copper hot water cans to carry the hot water from the kitchen to fill the bath. “Most of the people did their personal washing from washstands in the bedroom, and only used the bathroom when they had a bath.” In the Victorian era, in more well-to-do households with indoor plumbing there would be decorative washstands and wash basins, resembling the bathroom sink.
For museum viewings, contact Katharine Love at lindfieldhousemuseum@outlook.comoutlook.com or 011 726-2932.
