LOOKING for an unusual gift idea this Christmas? Well, what about a baywindow? Architect Herbert Baker got a bay window - called an orialwindow - from one of his architect colleagues as a birthday gift. Thiswindow can be seen on the west side of Stone House in Parktown, Baker'sown house and the first house he built in Johannesburg.

This is one of the details that emerged in the "God is in the detail" tour conducted by the Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Tour, one of their weekly tours of Johannesburg.

"God is in the detail" is an expression used by Mies van derRohe, a German architect (1886-1969). Known for his dictum 'Less isMore', he attempted to create contemplative, neutral spaces througharchitecture based on a universal, simple style.

This tour takes a look at several Herbert Baker houses andgardens in Parktown, and looks at the detail that makes these housesand gardens stand out the way they do.

Baker has left an enormous mark on South African architecture.He was born in Kent, England in 1862 and studied at the Royal School ofArchitecture. He first moved to South Africa in 1892, made friends withCecil Rhodes, who sponsored his further education in Europe, beforereturning to South Africa, after which he spent 20 years here.

Baker's designs can be seen across the country: cathedrals andchurches in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria, schools anduniversities in Grahamstown and Johannesburg, the Union Buildings inPretoria, the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town, the SA Institute forMedical Research in Johannesburg, Groot Constantia in Cape Town, StAnne's College Chapel in Pietermaritzburg, residential houses inJohannesburg. . .

Pilrig House

First stop on the tour is Pilrig House at no1 Rockridge Road, a classic Baker house built in the arts and craftsstyle, with a stone and mortar base up to first level, and the secondstorey with a rough mortar finish to imitate an earth look, paintedwhite. It has a shingle roof with several tall chimneys and a balconyfacing south, where the garden was.

Raimundo Cardoso, a conservation architect, conducted the tour.

"In 1902, Baker was a lucky man - he had the patronage of LordMilner, and he was invited to the Transvaal to design and buildresidences for the British colonials," says Cardosa.

At the time you could build a house that looked like a houseback in England or Scotland, by ordering the materials from catalogues- from steel ceilings to broekie lace to the latest plumbing ware. Thisprefabricated material was the way many early Johannesburgers builttheir houses. Those before them, the Voortrekkers, had built theirhouses using the same materials the indigenous people around them hadused - mud, reed, rocks, with manure on the floors.

Of course the British and the mining barons didn't want to usethese materials, and people like Milner didn't want the prefabricatedlook, so the answer was an architect who could appreciate what wasneeded.

"Milner wanted to show that the British had arrived and they wanted to live in houses that had gravitas," adds Cardoso.

Pilrig has small windows - the British didn't want too much brightsunlight entering the rooms - and has an inviting verandah with whitepillars leading to a relaxing patio to sit and enjoy the garden. Thegarden was a large orchard, with apple, plum and cherry trees. Thisarea is now occupied by Pilrig Place, an office block and a veryunimaginative building.

On the corner of the property was the coach house, stillstanding and with lots of charm - with a shingle roof, and woodenslates below the roof. There used to be a tennis court in the parkingarea of Pilrig Place. In the garden where there is now a sunken garden,it is believed there used to be reservoir.

An interesting feature of the house is the sundial on the patio wall -it is made for the northern hemisphere and therefore shows ten o'clockto be two o'clock.

Pilrig House is a national monument and it is believed that thename comes from a suburb in Edinburgh. It is a good example of the artsand crafts style: very simple, good proportions, use of naturalmaterials like stone, sand and timber, and the result is a veryattractive house.

Next door is St Margaret's, also a Baker house and now too a national monument.

St Margaret's, now a national monument

 St Margaret's was built in 1905 and is not visible from theroad, but what a pleasure it is to walk up the driveway through whatmust be one of the most stunning gardens in Johannesburg. It isdesigned by landscape architect Patrick Watson, who also designed thegardens at the holiday resort the Cascades Hotel at Sun City and itsextension, the Lost City, in the North-West Province.

The driveway has three old oak trees marking its entrance, andcharming old lamps on either side of the gate posts. The driveway thencurves up a slight rise and the eye is caught by a rock structure onthe right, with water cascading down the rocks, over the brick drivewayand into a fish pond on the other side, with lawns adding elegance. Thepond is filled with healthy looking koi fish (too big for the herons?)and demands that one stop and take in the surrounds.

"The water over the driveway symbolises a transparency ortransition as it goes into the pond. It is used as a mirror withreflective qualities," says Cardoso, becoming contemplative.

The eye is caught by a gazebo up on the right above thewaterfall, made of a range of materials and with diminishingproportions as it reaches roof level. It was awarded a merit award bythe Institute of South African Architects in the early eighties. Abovethe garage there used to be a Japanese contemplation garden but it nolonger exists.

Behind the koi pond hidden behind trees and shrubs is amysterious set of six columns, also believed at one time to have been asmall contemplation garden. The pond leads out into the winding streamthat runs and curves down the other side of the rise, towards thehouse.

The entrance to the house has a welcoming arched wooden door, with eachside of the doorway enhanced by fuchsias, hydrangeas, wild rhubarbyesterday, today and tomorrow shrubs and arum lilies.

The front rooms of the house are filled with wood - woodenfloors, wooden ceiling, wooden doorways, wooden furniture - and brickfireplaces, recessed windows, classic black and white tiles and Persianrugs.

The house is now owned by a German investment bank and has beenbeautifully restored and maintained. Out the front, overlooking thevalley down to Jan Smuts Avenue and up the hill of Westcliff, is asteep rock garden, with stone steps inviting one in. The house has avery pleasing profile: with tall chimneys, shingle roof, stone walls,different angled offshoots of roofs and wooden windows - god iscertainly in the detail.

Stone House

The cherry on top of Rockridge Road isBaker's house, Stone House, the first house he built in Parktown, forhimself and his family.

"Now this house has gravitas," sighs Cardoso with satisfaction.

Proclaimed a national monument in 1968, Stone House was sold tothe grandfather of the present owner, McKenzie, on Baker's departurefor India in 1912. It was Baker's home for ten years and must be one ofthe few houses around that is as attractive from both the front and theback entrances.

The front door on Rockridge Road is an impressive arched woodendoor, with a white-pillared atrium behind and above the door, makingfor an immensely pleasant space, and linking the west and east sides ofthe house. It has two symmetrical wings on either side, with shingleA-frame roofs. The house is built from quartzite stone taken from theridge, and with its wooden windows and tall chimneys, is a typical artsand crafts style house.

The back of the house echoes the front arch with three stonearches on the lower floor, and a balcony above them, again with twowings on either side.

When Baker arrived on the site, there were no craftsmen, so he set upan ironmongery on site - his skills were sufficient to teach thecraftsmen himself. He also had masons, metal workers and carpenters athand. He apparently allowed the workers to deviate from his plans in aneffort to encourage a hands-on building style.

Remember that when Baker built this house and looked out over thenorthern suburbs of Johannesburg he saw veld and rocks, and not asingle tree. Those rocks were used to build Stone House but the terrainmade for a very harsh, barren garden. All that has changed -Johannesburg is considered by some nowadays to be one of the largestman-made forests in the world.

Entering the garden on the west is a tennis court, a charminggazebo with a Japanese bird house on its roof, and an indigenous rockgarden. Moving around the front of the house and looking down the bank,is Vera's Rose Garden, a large area filled with multi-coloured roses,and encircled by a half circle of pale pink standard roses.

The garden is completed by tall jacaranda trees, conifers, andin the rockery just below the house, is a tumble of lavendar, plumbago,rosemary, agapanthus, hibiscus and hydrangeas. Halfway down the hill isa swimming pool and in the wall surrounding the pool is a plague notingthe placement of a gun over Jan Smuts Avenue, put there in the AngloBoer War.

"This house appears to grow on the mountain itself - it is a fantastic statement. I wouldn't change anything," says Cardoso.

And if you haven't had enough of this splendour, nip across theroad from Stone House and look through the fence into the garden of theoffice block The Galaxy, at 11 Eton Road, also a Patrick Watson garden.It consists of a very green rectangle of grass surrounded by water andmasses of bright green foliage up its banks, including large forestferns. It must be difficult to work in those offices overlooking thatinviting garden.

When Baker left South Africa in 1912, after completing themasterly Union Buildings in Pretoria, he went to India where hedesigned the magnificent government buildings in New Delhi, amongstother buildings. Back in England he is responsible for South AfricaHouse and India House, plus other buildings. He received a knighthoodin 1926 and died in 1946, at the age of 84. His remains are buried inWestminster Abbey.

In conclusion, Doreen Greig in A guide to architecture in South Africa,says of Baker: "In the true arts and crafts tradition, he employed thefinest artists and craftsmen he could find for enrichment: stainedglass work, stonework and carving, wrought ironwork. All was done withan intimate knowledge of the individual task and attention to detail."