The urban materialities of disused quarries in Cape Town

ABSTRACT

Quarried stone has a multitude of uses in the built environment. Often old, abandoned quarries near cities have become enveloped by urban expansion. This paper investigates what becomes of disused quarries, specifically in Cape Town, South Africa. The study is scaffolded by the theoretical underpinnings of urban materiality which, in turn, draws from assemblage theory. It is posited that the urban materialities of quarries, as one-time sites of material extraction, do not cease with closure. The infill, rehabilitation and repurposing of quarries for other uses result in continued contributions of quarries to the urbanscape, in addition to being historical sites of meaning and memory. The location of 77 quarries in Cape Town were mapped using data from various sources. Seventy-one quarries are in a post-extractive state. Thirty-five per cent of disused quarries have not been rehabilitated or altered by human activity after closure. However, they are sites of non-human use. Sixty-five per cent of the post-extractive quarries are sites for housing, commercial and educational activities; for recreational activities; have been infilled; or they store water for agricultural purposes. The reuse of quarries speaks to the creation of new urban materialities and assemblages by humans and non-humans which are worthy of further investigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Assemblage
• Cape town
• materiality
• quarries
• repurposing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The Later Stone Age is defined ‘ … as a culture-stratigraphic unit that includes all assemblages dated within the last 20,000 y, characterized by artifacts such as hafted microlithic tools; bored stones used as digging-stick weights; bows and arrows; polished bone tools, such as awls, linkshafts, and arrowheads; fishing equipment; beads of shell and ostrich eggshell; and engraved decoration on bone and wood items’ (Villa et al., 2012, p. 13208).

2. The Strand Street quarries were the first colonial-era quarries in Cape Town. The rock was used, inter alia, to build the Castle of Good Hope. The gradual slope down to the Castle facilitated transportation of the rocks by ox waggon (Rolando, 2015).

3. By 1999 Jan van Riebeeck’s quarry still provided stone for the renovation of buildings in Cape Town, including the stone paving at the Slave Museum and for gravestones (Cole et al., 2014).

4. ‘The pool was originally a quarry from which stone was blasted to provide ballast for the suburban railway that was used to connect the city with Sea Point. A concrete causeway carried a trolley from the quarry to the railway line’ (Blignaut, 1999, p. 3).