The original Henley-on-Klip street map
Issued by the Surveyor General (circa 1912)

Richard Kent is convinced, with good reason, that this copy of the map of Henley on Klip is the one that Horace Kent sent to his eldest son, Percy Kent. The map accompanied his handwritten letter to Percy, dated 9th December 1931, since they were both kept together in Percy’s archives. Horace eludes to this by saying “I am sending you by this mail, a print of General Plan”. He specifically mentions the areas of map coloured pink, blue, brown and uncoloured.

As a separate project, Richard is currently recording the correspondence between Horace (at the time, based in Henley-on-Klip) and his son Percy (based in China). It is interesting to note that Horace had a virtually illegible handwriting, and Richard Kent (Horace’s great-great Grandson) is determined, given time, to decypher the remainder of the nearly century-old correspondence. Click here and see for yourself.

To understand the full extent of Percy’s financial support of Horace, one only has to look at the hints left in the highlighted sections (in colour), on the map. In his letter, Horace mentions that: “The land coloured pink and blue is still vested in the Corporation and is included in your bond”. It is clear from the colour-coded erven that Percy was actually the largest landowner in Henley-on Klip in 1931, effectively owning nearly 40% of the village!

The Original Map

This version of the map is a web-friendly version of a high-resolution scan of the original map, complete with folds and damaged sections where a significant part of the stand numbers, borders and street names were damaged beyond legibility.

This version of the map is a web-friendly version with most of the damaged sections painstakingly “repaired” electronically.

Click on the map image below for a larger view. Please note, detail may not be legible due to the reduction from the original high-resolution scanned map.

Web-friendly version of the high-resolution scan of the original map