#Johannesburg

This post is not part of my Hidden Joburg series, which I started last year (and will eventually return to). But it should be. St. Alban’s Anglican Mission Church in Ferreirasdorp would have been a perfect addition to the Hidden Joburg book and I don’t know why it was left out. This church is so hidden, you can’t even see it on Google Street view.

It’s been two months since Thorsten and I joined a Johannesburg Heritage Foundation tour of three crazy houses on New Mountain Road in Linksfield Ridge. I have very limited time to write this post (I’m getting on a plane to Namibia tomorrow – more on that soon), but I want to share my photos and Thorsten’s sketches of the New Mountain Road tour before 2023 runs away from me. Please excuse this quick version of what could be a much longer (and better) post.

Tomorrow is the Lunar New Year – the Year of the Rabbit – and this is my first Joburg post of 2023. In celebration of both these facts, I’m thrilled to tell you about Tea and Antique, a brand-new Chinese establishment in Bedfordview.

My quest to visit all of the places featured in the Hidden Johannesburg book continues. With my recent trip to the Freemasons’ Hall, which I’m about to tell you about, I have now visited 20 of the 28 places in the book. This will be my final Hidden Joburg post of the year and I think it’s a good one.

I’ve visited Lilian Road Studios, a collection of artists’ studios in a historic, dilapidated building in Fordsburg, many times. Several great Joburg artists have had studios at Lilian Road, including Hannelie Coetzee and Hermann Niebuhr. Now there is a group of artists working there, several of whom are my friends, and I can’t believe I’ve never blogged about it before. There are so many things I love about these studios.