Maynardville and Chelsea Village – a reprieve in the midst of Wynberg

Ballet at Maynardville

A few of my friends have been talk­ing about Maynardville Park of late. It seems that the park has under­gone some­thing of a facelift and the children's play area in par­tic­u­lar is now def­in­itely worth a visit. Besides, we're all wait­ing in anti­cip­a­tion for the next out­door pro­duc­tion of Shakespeare.

Maynardville Park is in on the corner of Church and Wolfe Street in Wynberg, for those of you who haven't been there, with one of the main entrances at the end of Wolfe Street, which runs through Chelsea Village. Chelsea Village, also known as Old Wynberg Village and Little Chelsea (although it has no 'offi­cial' name on the map), is a gor­geous little strip of pret­tily pre­served his­toric build­ings filled with décor shops, café's, an old-fashioned and rather prom­in­ent red post­box, and all the trap­pings of a typ­ical little English Village – bou­gan­villea and climb­ing roses predominate.

The vil­lage appar­ently got its name from the many artists, interior dec­or­at­ors and fur­niture design­ers who made the vil­lage their home dur­ing the 1950s because it reminded people of London's rather bohemian Chelsea. Neither Chelsea in London, nor Wynberg's little vil­lage, are bohemian any longer. Properties here are worth a lot more than the aver­age strug­gling artist can afford, but the vil­lage has main­tained an ele­ment of bohemian chic, and the fur­niture design­ers and interior dec­or­at­ors per­sist, in amongst a col­lec­tion of res­taur­ants, pubs and business.

The vil­lage is heritage-rich and a walk round the lovely inter­link­ing lanes and four major roads in Chelsea are charn­ing and a won­der­ful way to spend a morning.

Maynardville Park acts in many ways as a green buf­fer zone for Chelsea, pro­tect­ing it from the vroom and zoom of Main Road Wynberg. It is a large park with beau­ti­ful gar­dens, huge trees and, of course, the open air theatre – appar­ently there has been a dif­fer­ent Shakespearian play staged here since 1956 – quite a tra­di­tion, and one not to be missed.

The reason the park is receiv­ing added atten­tion by my friends with chil­dren is that it is in the pro­cess of under­go­ing an R805 000 upgrade, which began in February this year, and includes a new tim­ber play area as well as refur­bished equip­ment from the old play­ground. The new play­ground is just the begin­ning. By all accounts there are plans to con­vert Maynard Cottage, which lies on the corner of Wolfe and Piers Road entrance closest to Wynberg vil­lage, into a res­taur­ant, which should def­in­itely add to the buzz  about the park. The Wynberg lib­rary is appar­ently to be incor­por­ated into the park, and the Rozendal Cottage is also to be upgraded.

The beau­ti­ful trees in the park are the leg­acy of what was once a fine Victorian garden. It was planted when col­lect­ing exotic trees was the thing to do if you were one of the elite in Cape Town and the Maynard/Farmer fam­ily, res­id­ent in what was known as the Maynard's Villa (it sub­sequently burnt down, was rebuilt and then later demol­ished by the muni­cip­al­ity), com­mis­sioned a hor­ti­cul­tur­ist all the way from Kew Gardens to land­scape the garden. Thus medi­ter­ranean cork oak trees lie side-by-side with swamp cypress trees and beau­ti­ful, lemon-scented gum trees, cre­at­ing a rather mag­ni­fi­cent can­opy that con­trib­utes in no small part to the magic of the Shakespearean evenings.

And the Shakespeare? Two rather ima­gin­at­ive and enthu­si­astic South African act­resses, Cecilia Sonnenberg and René Abrenson, decided dur­ing the 1950s that the old arch­ery lawn held a cer­tain allure for them as a magical set­ting for Shakespeare. Today it is one of the best-loved out­door theatre ven­ues in the Cape with a 720-seater wooded theatre set­ting that attracts around 20 000 vis­it­ors a year, includ­ing count­less school chil­dren who have, year after year, often enjoyed their set­work at Maynardville.

The first pro­duc­tion of Shakespeare was Taming of the Shrew, which ran to a packed house for a month and set the tone for things to come. In 1975 Cecilia and René joined forces with CAPAB for five years, and since their retire­ment, the Drama depart­ment of Artscape has kept the theatre filled to capa­city. Audiences can look for­ward to Anthony and Cleopatra in 2010, due to run from 13 January to the 13 February, and from 14 Jan until 21 Feb, the Firebird Ballet puts in five performances.

All of this makes me itch to pay the park a visit. Soon, soon ...

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