By Dr. Robin Lee

The grottos, Grotto Beach and Piet-se-Bos today

The earliest written reference I can find to the grottos in Hermanus is in a Memoir by Nancy Okes (nee Napier) whose family traveled from Cape Town every year in the 1920s and 1930s to holiday in Hermanus. The family always stayed at the Riviera Hotel which was sited just above the Grottos. The Sandals’ townhouses now occupy the site.

In Nancy’s father’s new Buick Tourer the trip had recently been ‘cut’ to three and a half hours – over holidays it can take that long even today. This contrasts with the time taken by the Gearing family twenty years earlier when the trip took two full days and involved a night’s camping on the banks of the Palmiet River, near Grabouw.

Nancy uses the term ‘grottos’ as if everyone knew what and where they were and does not mention any other name by which they might have been known. However, the photograph below comes from the 1920s and is captioned “The Fern Kloof, Now the Grotto”. It appears as if the area was known as the ‘varingkloof’ before it was anglicised to the ‘grottos’. The name may also have been changed to avoid confusion with the suburb Fernkloof.

The word ‘grotto’ is derived from the Latin word ‘grupta’, which survived in modern Italian as ‘grotto’. It meant ‘an underground crypt’ and over the centuries has come to be applied to natural and man-made ‘caves’, whether part of a hill or cliff or free standing. The difference between a cave and a grotto seems to be that the grotto is shallower and usually filled with attractive vegetation of one sort or another. In modern English the word ‘grotto’ always carries indications of natural beauty. However, science has more to say about the origins of the Grottos. Frank Tennick is a retired geologist and has made a special study of the geology of the Fernkloof Nature Reserve which is adjacent to the Grottos. I visited the site with him on 25 January 2017 and he explained the following aspects of the rock associated with the Grottos.

The main rock formation is Table Mountain Sandstone (TMS) which is the dominant type of formation in the Hermanus area deposited some 450 million years ago. The grottos date from a later period when these rocks became exposed to weathering and wave action.

The cliff face shows bands of shale of different width between the layers of TMS. The iintercaled shale is indicative of deposition in deeper waters of more modern origin (about 100 million years ago) and is much softer than the enclosing, more resistant sandstone rock. This has had two effects:

The blocks of TMS have slipped along the shale beds and so fractured to create planes of weakness racked in this way

The softer lines of weakness, are more easily eroded by the current and wave action of the ocean during the periods when the formations were under or adjacent to the ocean. It is this wave action that has scoured out the caves and carried away most of the debris. This process will have been assisted (marginally) by fresh water entering the cave and contributing to the erosion. As the cave is scoured out large pieces of rock fall from the upper layers as the supporting layers are weakened or eventually removed.

The fresh water supply comes from one of the numerous streams that originate in the mountains behind Hermanus of which Hermanus Pieters Fontein is another example.

I have been able to find only two photographs of the Grottos in their natural state:

‘Varingsgrot’ or ‘Grotto’ 1920

From the man’s clothing this image seems to have been taken in the 1920s. The profusion of ferns is clearly illustrated.

Children found the Grottos irresistible. Nancy Okes’ description of the Grottos has the nostalgia and delight in childhood that is nearly universal in everyone writing a memoir about a childhood in Hermanus:

If the bowling green [at the Royal Hotel] were the sanctum sanctorum of the adults, to us children (and by this time about 15 had assembled) its place was taken by the Grottos. These lay to the west of the hotel, across the mashie golf course. The ground fell away sharply into a donga [a gulley]). The mountain stream at the Riviera entrance flowed down to service the Grottos, running round the top and tinkling down the rock faces all the way round. The Grottos themselves, five or six large caverns, lay in the rock face, in a semi-circle. To reach them, one had to clamber down the rocks, thus eliminating all adults. The Grottos faced onto a small ‘vlei’ [wetland] in which grew tall blue Aristea and golden Wachendorfia and reeds, about 5 feet high. In amongst their tall blooms rioted the weaver birds, finches as gold as guineas, scarlet Bishop birds and the black and red Widow birds. The males, in full mating garb were building their nests while the females perched, apparently disinterested, nearby.

Each grotto had a rocky floor with pools and frogs and tadpoles. The walls were festooned with maiden hair fern and on their ceilings slept the bats, black and upside-down. Around the circumference of the vlei ran a mossy path, enabling us to flit from cave to cave, enchanted. The grottos were pure magic with moss, ferns and water dripping down. All this ended when the water was cut off when they built the new road. On the beach, adult-free, we played cowboys and crooks and hide and seek. When we were tired, we scrambled up the white dune at the edge of the vlei, battled through the timber lots of the melkhout [milk wood] which topped it, and there before us lay the ocean and the endless beach stretching on either side, deserted and pristine.

The ‘small vlei’ to which Nancy Okes refers, we would now call a wetland. Nancy is being polite in calling it a ‘vlei’. Most residents at the time referred to it as a ‘swamp’. It occupied virtually all the space between the first of the dunes, where the road to the beach runs now, and the Grottos themselves. Frank Woodvine, former Curator of Fernkloof Nature Reserve has told me that the famous Dr. Ion Williams, who created Fernkloof Nature Reserve spoke often about the wetland. Specifically, he mentioned that when he was a boy in the early 1920s there was enough water for him to paddle his canoe around the wetland and that wild geese visited the wetland as a migratory stopover point each year.

As more houses were built at the top of the cliffs containing the Grottos, the streams Nancy refers to ceased to be clear and became polluted in various ways. In turn this introduced pollution into the wetland.

Long-time Hermanus resident Michael Clark recalls the changes as seen from a family perspective:

When our children were small – late sixties and possibly the early seventies – there was a pipe under the road more or less where the present parking area is, just past the restaurant and changing rooms. This was a pipe of about fifty millimetres and was supposed to drain off the excess water from the grotto. For a short distance the water flowing out of the pipe, formed a small river on the beach and then disappeared into the sand. It was a wonderful place for young boys to play, building dams. My wife Pat and I would take our sons there often to play. One day Dr. Cohn [well-known Hermanus doctor who shared rooms in Harbour Road with Dr. Daneel] walked past and said the water was polluted and that it was not a good idea for the children to play there. Pat, who was an ex- nurse, was incensed and thought Dr Cohn was over- reacting. Next day she went to the Municipality and asked them to have the water tested. Lo and behold, the water had a huge pollution count. This was caused by the septic tanks and soak-aways on the properties above the grotto. There was no sewage system in Hermanus in those days. The municipality then built a large concrete structure at the outlet of the pipe on the beach to somehow purify the water before allowing it to run onto the beach. As I remember, this was not a success, but our children did not contract any horrible diseases.

The pollution made it essential for the municipality to intervene, but what followed was probably an over-reaction. According to some accounts in December 1968 one of Hermanus’s best-known and popular hotels was damaged by fire. It is rumoured that, because ‘spill’ (rubble) from the demolition and rebuilding of the damaged sections of the Birkenhead Hotel was available, it was decided to use it to completely fill the wetland. Soil was put on top and grass grown. The stabilised area was then opened to the public as a picnic area. However, I have been unable to confirm this sequence of events.

Despite health issues, the wetland had provided a natural barrier between the Grottos and the holiday public. Removing this barrier brought holiday crowds right up to the entrances to the Grottos and quite soon the clear pools mentioned by Nancy Okes became polluted with empty beer cans, bottles of all sorts, paper, cigarette butts and the like. Little attention was given to the preservation of the luxuriant ferns and other plant life and at the time that this article is written, the Grottos are an eyesore rather than an attraction to tourists.

From the date of construction of the Riviera Hotel in 1902 till the 1930s the beach adjacent to the Grottos was known as Riviera Beach. In all likelihood this name was given by the owner of the Riviera Hotel from 1908 to 1940, P John Luyt. He regularly sought for ways to make Hermanus more attractive to foreign tourists and “Riviera” gave a sense of European continental luxury and exclusiveness. However, it seems that there was a reaction to the name “Riviera Beach” among permanent residents of Hermanus, to whom it seemed to imply that the beach was a private area and entrance restricted to guests of the hotel. This was certainly not the case though two incidents in the 1930s give us an idea of the beach was, in fact, more secluded. Joey Luyt writes (in her book “In Those Days: The Story of Joey van Rhyn Luyt at the Marine Hotel Hermanus”):

Two friends of [her son] Henry’s, Bill Williamson, and Pat Murdoch, often came down during the summer in their small private aeroplanes, landing on Riviera Beach. They took visitors up for flips over the bay, and these trips were very popular. Peter (Henry’s son) would spend the whole day on the beach with the planes, and the pilots would take him up as ballast if there were not enough passengers.

Riviera Hotel early 1900s

Riviera Beach was also the scene of another, completely different event:

One afternoon I (Joey Luyt) got an urgent phone call from Henry (her son and manager of the Riviera Hotel) asking me to come out to the Riviera right away. One of the guests, a Miss X, had taken off all her clothes and was running up and down the Riviera Beach stark naked. She had been staying there for a week, also with a nurse, supposedly convalescing after an illness. In actual fact she had been to a mental home. I told Henry to fetch Sergeant Roux and his wife, and to ask the Sergeant to wear plain clothes, while I telephoned her family to say we were sending Miss X home. When the Sergeant, a most understanding man, arrived, I sent the nurse to Miss X (still capering around on the beach) with a wrap, to tell her that a very nice man had called to take her for a drive. Miss X was delighted with this, so we were able to persuade her to get dressed, while the nurse packed their things. She went off quite happily in the car, sitting next to the Sergeant, with Mrs Roux and the nurse. Miss X was a lovely girl. When young she was subject to periodic fits; on becoming engaged, her parents felt that the young man should be told of this. His parents made him break off the engagement. Miss X had had a complete mental breakdown, and had been in a home off and on for years. This little story has a happy ending. Some years later I met Miss X unexpectedly, in Cape Town. She was completely cured, had married, and was very happy.

Sometime in the 1930s the name Grotto Beach came to be used to avoid the connotation of a private beach and has now become the formal name of the beach. It is registered by that name with the Blue Flag organisation.

Another whole article could be written about the other main feature of Grotto Beach – the ‘Lagoon’ or, more accurately, the Klein River Estuary. Many pages of the newspapers since 1949 are devoted to the topic of the correct time and method to ‘breach’ the estuary ‘artificially’, if it does not breach naturally. The intensity of feeling about a favourite way of doing this, and the animosity towards those who favour a different course of action to the writer are most surprising. This trend persists even in 2016.

Artificial breach of Klein River Estuary 1960

Adjacent to the Grottos and the wetland is a stand of milkwood trees, possibly the largest stand in Hermanus today. It is known to Afrikaans and English speakers as “Piet-se-Bos. There is no information as to who Piet was.

There are two rocks from which it was possible to fish near the Old Harbour, known as Piet-se-Klip and “Frans-se-Klip”, again with no record of whose name is attached to each site. But the short walk through Piet-se-Bos gives some idea of the beauty of the coastline before people came and built houses. Under the milkwood trees it is cool and shady and any walker passes silently on the soft surface of fallen milkwood leaves and sea sand. A stream runs through the wood and there is a small pool, with ferns growing all around. To prevent damage to young milkwoods a wooden boardwalk has been built through most of the area.

The milkwood forest is a precious heritage. It has historical, ecological and conservation implications. Historically milkwoods covered many places along the coastal fringe of South Africa from Cape Town to Richards Bay. They were often the first vegetation sailors came across on landing in search of food or water. A tradition grew up of sailors leaving letters for home in or under milkwood trees, hoping that they would be picked up by a passing ship and taken to the home country.

The trees themselves are important in stabilising dunes and also have medicinal value. However, they are under threat everywhere, mainly due to human behaviour. This is despite the fact that they are Protected Trees” and it is illegal to damage, move or destroy them.

With commendable foresight the whole Piet-se-Bos has been declared part of the Fernkloof Nature Reserve and two voluntary bodies, the Cliff Path Management Group and Whale Coast Conservation, keep it as pristine as possible. Meanwhile, intense discussion has been taking place between the Municipality and the ‘interested and affected parties’ as to the best way to bring the area into proper use.