HERE is a suburb in Johannesburg that is "dry". Not because there's no water available to the residents, but because Louw Geldenhuys, farmer, politician and a deeply religious man, who owned the farm Braamfontein over 100 years ago, didn't want alcohol supplied to blacks working on the mines.

That suburb is Emmarentia, one of several suburbs established from the larger Braamfontein farm, and still without a bottle store.

In the early 1830s, there were white people settled on farms around the Witwatersrand, living and working under harsh conditions alongside their black pastoralist neighbours. When the British annexed Natal and the Orange Free State in the 1840s, further waves of people trekked into the Transvaal.

Amongst these new arrivals, the Voortrekkers, was Gerrit Bezuidenhout, originally from Beaufort in the Cape. In 1858 he was granted title of the farm Braamfontein, an area of 3 500 hectares. The stand, together with some 20 surrounding farms, was to form the future city of Johannesburg.

Braamfontein was a large farm, stretching from Victory Park around to Rosebank in the north, Killarney down to Commissioner Street in the east, over to Mayfair and Coronationville in the south-west, and up to the base of the Northcliff ridge.

The farm was sub-divided several times and the eastern part bought by Lourens Geldenhuys (Louw's father) for £4 500 in 1886, the year the main gold reef was discovered in Johannesburg.

Gold in the northern suburbs
Lourens, originally from Swellendam in the Cape, had at first settled at Kliprivier near Heidelberg (60 kilometres south of Johannesburg) in 1853, where his three sons - Frans, Dirk, and Louw - were born. He had visited Barberton in Mpumalanga and had been exposed to gold diggings and gold-bearing rock.

In 1875 he bought a portion of the southern section of the farm Wilgespruit (near Roodepoort), and gold was found there the following year. He formed the General Prospecting and Mining Company of Burgers of the ZAR. But this gold reef was soon depleted.

Gold was discovered at other nearby areas - Blaauwbank, Weltevreden, Suikerbosrand and Kromdraai. Lourens got to hear about the Struben brothers, who were prospecting for gold in the area. Struben bought Wilgespruit from Lourens and found more gold in a quartz band. He called it the Confidence Reef.

This brought more and more people to the Reef, but even the Confidence Reef died out. But Lourens, expecting the Confidence Reef to extend eastwards, bought a mynpact (mining right) for £4 500 on the western portion of Braamfontein, in the Melville Koppies. Traces of these explorations are still visible in the rocky outcrops on the ridge.

Lourens bought land further east, at Elandsfontein, and shortly after the main reef was discovered by George Harrison in 1886 at Langlaagte, Lourens and his sons found gold at Elandsfontein. They floated the Geldenhuys Estates Gold Mining Company, which was later sold to the Corner House Group.

Lourens remained on Elandsfontein (now Bedfordview), and his three sons went farming. Frans and Louw moved back to Braamfontein, and divided the farm in two, each building themselves a farmhouse. Dirk went farming at Ermelo in the Northern Province.

Frans's and Louw's farmhouses still stand, in the suburb of Emmarentia. Frans married Judith Grobbelaar and built what is now the converted clubhouse of Marks Park. Judith Road in Emmarentia take its name from her.

Louw met and married Emmarentia Botha and built her a large farmhouse at Greenhill Road, in 1887, which is now a national monument, and the oldest house in Johannesburg.

She had 15 children, eight of whom survived, but at 34 one of the sons died of pneumonia. These children are buried at a family cemetery in Hill Road, several blocks above the farmhouse.

In 1891 Frans and Louw registered the subdivision of their farms, the boundary being Orange Road, each getting half of the water supply that flows from the present-day Westdene Dam.

In 1895 the brothers added to their farms, to ensure the continued supply of water, by buying parts of the neighbouring farm Waterval, to the west of Braamfontein. In 1896 Louw sold the land that is now Melville and Richmond, and for £300 000 he sold a further section which became Braamfontein and Parktown. For a further six-figure amount he later sold land which grew into the suburbs of Parkview, Forest Town and Parktown West.

In 1898 Louw bought the farm Honingklip near Krugersdorp. Louw periodically sold sections of the farm for large amounts of money; they grew to become the surrounding suburbs, for example Westdene and Parkhurst.

Louw and Emmarentia's son Louw went farming at Honingklip in 1918, calling the farm Laurentia. It is now a very successful farm of 3 000 acres, producing roses, fruit, mealies and cattle.

Louw and Frans were involved in the Anglo Boer War. They joined the Krugersdorp Commando and saw action in Natal.

Louw Geldenhuys
Louw was a compassionate man: when the War was over, he provided landless Boers with work by getting them to construct Emmarentia Dam at the bottom of his property. "Only white men were used for the work, and they hewed out great blocks of stone from the hill and fixed them into the wall that now banks up fifty vertical feet of water," according to the June 1929 South African Party Bulletin.

He then settled 100 of these men on smallholdings on his farm, on the present day Emmarentia, Linden and Greenside. He did not charge them rent, but they paid a third of their profits to him. The Bulletin describes the farm: "About the estate is a score of comfortable farm cottages, housing some twelve score of people [240], who share in the culture and products of the farm." Those products included "peaches, apricots, other various fruits, lucerne, and vegetables, etc".

Louw gave to the community in other ways: he founded the Langlaagte Kindertehuis for Boer War orphans in 1902, still existing as the Abraham Kriel Maria Kloppers Kinderhuis. He also founded the Braamfontein Government School, where classes were held in a barn behind the house until it became the Louw Geldenhuys School, which still exists, in nearby Linden.

Louw was also active politically. In 1895 he was elected to represent the Witwatersrand in the Tweede Volksraad (Second House of Parliament) as the South African Party candidate. He was admired for his knowledge of his neighbours and their problems, and "his complete freedom from racial bias and his basic sound sense made him an ideal representative in Parliament . . .", says the Bulletin.

The "racial bias" being referred to was between Afrikaners and English speakers. He was elected to the Johannesburg Town Council on the ticket of the "ten best men", and vowed, when asked, that he would speak English "if I think that best. But sometimes there are Englishmen who understand Afrikaans, and to them I'll speak Afrikaans."

He retained his parliamentary seat until his death, despite his party losing their majority in 1924. "When the South African Party Government was overwhelmed in 1924 [lost to Jan Smuts over the 1922 miners' strike] Mr Geldenhuys still held his seat in parliament, and in the heat of the election he never abated his kindly courtesy towards his opponents, a feature which has distinguished him throughout his career."

The issue of alcohol and keeping it from blacks crept into his political life. He apparently lost his Volksraad seat to General Ben Viljoen in 1899. "The issue on which he lost still commands attention from all citizens - the best method of stopping the supply of liquor to natives", according to Eric Rosenthal in his book Other men's millions; the belief was apparently that workers' productivity would be negatively affected by access to alcohol.

Louw died of a heart attack in 1929, at the age of 65. The obituary in the Dutch Reformed Church newsletter says: "A large attendance is expected at the funeral, and it is likely that General JC Smuts will also be present." He was, and made a speech to some 2 000 people, it is believed.

Emmarentia and the farmhouse
Louw's wife, Emmarentia, went ahead with the subdivision of the farm - Greenside was laid out in 1931 and Emmarentia in 1937. The subdivision was something that Louw had resisted for a long time, particularly losing the koppie behind his farmhouse, but Emmarentia Extension was laid out in 1945, and it allowed houses up to the top of the koppie, behind the house.

Emmarentia, who has given her name to the suburb, was a keen gardener, and planted five palm trees in a circle in front of the house. They are still there, huge and luxuriant, together with three others nearby. In fact she would be pleased to see how healthy the garden is, the house being barely visible from the road with its abundant foliage.

A huge oak tree stands outside the house and when the township was being laid out, with a road running in front of the farmhouse, it was proposed that the tree be cut down. Emmarentia put her foot down - the tree was staying. And so today the road has a slight kink in it to accommodate the tree.

She died in 1938, at 72, and is buried at the family cemetery in Hill Road. There are 77 graves in the small cemetery, 49 of which are children's graves, all diphtheria casualties. The graves reflect names like Swanepoel, Steyn, Ayres, Hopley and McGrath, believed to be the small-scale farmers Louw gave smallholdings to.

Emmarentia farmhouse

The farmhouse today
One of Louw and Emmarentia's daughters, Marie, married Edward van der Merwe, and their son, Louw Geldenhuys van der Merwe, now retired, remembers the house.

"I was born there in 1936. I remember there were peach trees down to the dam. I used to go on horseback to school at Jan Celliers [at Zoo Lake]," he recalls.

Van der Merwe bought the house in 1978, but by the early 1990s the house had become too big for his family, so it was put on auction in 1992. "I felt very sad to be leaving the house but it had become too big," he says.

On the day of the auction the front lawn was crowded and the winning bid of R700 000 was reached very quickly. Van der Merwe had 72 hours to accept the bid, and the final bidders and now the owners, who wish not to be named, pondered those three days very differently. She says: "I was hoping and praying that he would turn down the offer." He says: "I was hoping the house would be ours."

The reason for the apprehension was that the house was in a run-down condition. There were serious cracks in the 60cm walls. The pressed-steel ceilings were rusted and the wooden floors were rotten in places.

It took seven months before they could move in, but now if you ask them if they would sell, after 10 years of living in the house, she says: "I feel privileged to live here; I don't want to live in any other house."

It's not hard to see why - the house is an eclectic mix of styles: it is a classical Victorian South African house with a stoep 26-metres long and 4-metres deep stoep, bay windows and A-framed gables at either end, with white walls and green roof and fascias.

The lounge has a Victorian fireplace and pressed steel ceilings; the second bathroom is a delight of Art Deco decoration in restful yellow tiles with black edging tiles and green and blue tiles running in a pattern at intervals along the wall; the pantry has been restored to its look of natural wooden cupboards with wire fronts. The old black candle-burn marks at the bottom of the cupboard doors in the pantry remain as a reminder of the age of the house.

The owners found it hard to know what period to restore the house to, with this mix. It is now furnished to reflect that mix - with Art Deco couches, light fittings and mirrors blending perfectly with the beautiful Canadian deal floors and doors, tall ceilings (4.8 metres high) and wide cornices, and chandeliers.

A unique feature are the pillars on the front stoep: they are upside down cannon barrels, painted white.

The house, now 115 years old, has been tactfully conserved: a good example of this is the renovation of the kitchen, which contained the original large coal stove up until three years ago.

The beautiful blue and white tiles set the tone for the room: "We saved these tiles from around the kitchen - they were behind cupboards in some places," says the owner. The tiles now greet you as you enter the kitchen, and they encircle the room. Together with the white gloss cupboards, speckled granite counters, white walls, hob, stable door, and a row of large display blue and white plates on top of the cupboards, it makes for a very agreeable place in which to spend time.

A triangle of the floor at the entrance to the kitchen is the original floor, with attractive 10-centimetre brown and beige square tiles offset by a border of black and beige triangular tiles. The rest of the tiles were too worn to save, so they were replaced with plain charcoal slate tiles, which blend in perfectly.

A perfect conservation job for a beautiful house. Louw and Emmarentia would be proud to sit on that wonderful stoep and look into their fertile garden, the tall palms rustling gently in the breeze.