Durban Bowling Club, established in 1903
The story goes that 14 gentlemen assembled at the Claremont Hotel and formed a bowling club.
THE Durban Bowling club was founded on November 28, 1903.
“The story goes that 14 gentlemen assembled at the Claremont Hotel and formed a bowling club. Originally, it was called the Natal bowling Club. At its first AGM, they changed the name to the Durban Bowling Club. You can picture, in those times, there was just a little village in Durban and they had sandy roads and so on,” said club’s chairman, Peter Jackson.
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The club is located on Gladys Manzi Road, which was then named Mitchell Road.
“The club applied to the municipality and moved to the present site. The Umgeni River used to flow through here. The Mayor of Durban, at the time, councillor Herwood, in his speech, said he had learnt to swim at that very spot where the bowling green now lies. The whole clubhouse in those days cost the princely sum of £32.10. The second green was opened in 1912 and the third green was commissioned in 1918. Where the car park is, there used to be a children’s bowling green,” said Jackson.
He added that the club is the fourth oldest in South Africa.
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“In August 1882 a bowling club was opened in Port Elizabeth, thereafter, in 1891, a Kimberly club was opened. In KwaZulu-Natal, the oldest bowling club was opened in Pietermaritzburg in 1902. Durban Bowling club is the fourth oldest in existence. To join a club back then, you used to pay an annual fee of £1 a year,” he said.
Today, the fee has climbed to about R1 500 per annum.
When Jackson took up the post of chairman in the 90s, the club was paying about R20 a year to lease the facility.
He said they now pay R6 500 per month for the lease, which is renewed month by month.
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