“IT was a huge wall of flames,” said Bedford resident, Di du Preez, of the sight with which she was met at 05:30 last Saturday.
Woken by her dog barking, she looked across Stockholm Street to the bonfire that was once a historic building, a Victorian school downgraded in the early 1990s to a municipal storehouse.
In spite of being so fierce, the fire raged on until 08:30.
Du Preez said, “If the wind had been blowing, the fire would have spread and it could have been bye-bye Bedford.”
A handful of neighbours, some of whom were in their pyjamas, soon gathered to witness the destruction of the building and its contents which included rafters for low-cost housing and thousands of rands’ worth of electrical consumables and equipment.
No one was injured as the caretaker, who normally sleeps on site, was absent.
Three non-functional municipal vehicles, two bakkies and a tractor, were undamaged despite being parked dangerously close to the inferno.
Meanwhile, Van Riebeeck Street resident, Ian Brouwer, took action. When he discovered there was no hose on the municipal fire extinguisher, he rushed home to connect his own hose pipes to his borehole pump.
By then the roof on the old building had collapsed in a tangle of buckled iron. At the time of going to press, the cause of the fire was still being investigated.
The story lives on
“Although the building may be destroyed, its story will live on,” said Bedford’s history tour guide, Sylvia Gaizer. She said the building dated back to the late 1800s and was originally St Columbus Primary School, financed by the Roman Catholic Church.
It served the so-called coloured community which was subsequently removed from the vicinity during the apartheid era. Indigent families of European origins had also benefited from the excellent education offered.
By 1905 it was dubbed ‘the poor school’, as opposed to the upper class Bedford Convent on the site now occupied by the Bedford Retirement Village.
Nonetheless, in St Columbus Primary’s heyday (1901 to 1918), headmistress, Mrs McLeod, achieved an exceptionally high standard of tuition in English grammar and reading. Alumni of the school always spoke impeccable English.
