BROOKSHAW RETIREMENT CENTRE
History
The history of Brookshaw, one of warmth and generosity, is tangible in and around the circular turret of the main building, the flats, apartments and clusters that make up the complex.
When Laura Elizabeth Brookshaw (née Chapman) passed away at the age of 93 in 1960, her will provided a substantial bequest for the establishment of “The Brookshaw Trust”. The primary purpose of the Trust was to establish “a Home in Grahamstown for elderly Residents of Grahamstown, married or single, who while not being paupers or needing constant professional or other treatment in a Hospital or other similar Institution, yet due to death, old age or lack of means, find it difficult or impossible to keep up their separate homes and desire comfortable rooms in which to live in a communal home but are able to contribute something according to their means towards the cost of their maintenance”.
Our Story
With the assistance of the Rotary Club of Grahamstown, the trustees convened a meeting of churches and community service organisations to elect an advisory council that would help realise the intention of the bequest. The trustees purchased the villa known as Woodville and its annexe, St Michael’s Lodge, at 9 Donkin Street, which had just come on the market. Built by Richard Graham Stone in 1849, the property has a fascinating history that is closely bound up with the history of Grahamstown. Stone owned the property for only 11 years before it was bought by George Wood, (whose son was the first Mayor of Grahamstown) and named the building Woodville. In the house and its annexe, St Michael’s, Mother Cecile of the Community of the Resurrection established an orphanage and a teachers’ training school in 1884, and ran it for nearly 70 years. When the State stopped subsidising smaller orphanages, the extensive site between Donkin and Beaufort Streets was ready for a new role.
After purchasing the property in 1961, the Advisory Committee was enlarged. Woodville was restored and St. Michael’s was converted. Local building contractors helped and advised freely. Members of the Rotary Club of Grahamstown and the Rotary Anns furnished the home and oversaw the layout of the garden. Round Table contributed built-in cupboards in the servery and Rhodes University donated a stove and provided a large refrigerator.
By 1 February 1962 the first residents moved in and a little later the Department of Social Welfare and Pensions granted the home registration as a Welfare Organisation. Between 1963 and 1996 Espin Lodge, with ten flats, and Shuttleworth Lodge, with eight more, were erected in the grounds, greatly expanding the available accommodation. Woodville was extended to provide a dining room and an enlarged kitchen.
Later, the purchase of Guardian Lodge added four two-bedroom and four one-bedroom flats to the complex. In 2002, at a cost of almost R1 million, a Frail Care unit was completed and joined to St. Michael’s Lodge, which until then had catered only for the semi-frail.