Pilrig House is situated at; no.1 Rockridge Road. A classic Baker House built in the arts and crafts style, with a stone and mortar base up to first level, and the second storey with a rough mortar finish to imitate an earth look, painted white. It has a shingle roof with several tall chimneys and a balcony facing South, where the garden was.
"In 1902, Baker was a lucky man - he had the patronage of Lord Milner, and he was invited to the Transvaal to design and build residences for the British colonials," says Raimundo Cardoso, a conservation architect. At the time you could build a house that looked like a House back in England or Scotland, by ordering the materials from catalogues- from steel ceilings to broekie lace to the latest plumbing ware. This prefabricated material was the way many early Johannesburgers built their houses. Those before them, the Voortrekkers, had built their houses using the same materials the indigenous people around them hadused - mud, reed, rocks, with manure on the floors. Of course the British and the Mining Barons didn't want to use these materials and people like Milner didn't want the prefabricated look, so the answer was an architect who could appreciate what was needed.
"Milner wanted to show that the British had arrived and they wanted to live in houses that had gravitas," adds Cardoso.
Pilrig has small windows - the British didn't want too much brightsunlight entering the rooms - and has an inviting verandah with white pillars leading to a relaxing patio to sit and enjoy the garden. The garden was a large orchard, with apple, plum and cherry trees. This area is now occupied by Pilrig Place, an office block and a very unimaginative building.
On the corner of the property was the Coach House, still standing and with lots of charm - with a shingle roof, and wooden slates below the roof. There used to be a tennis court in the parking area of Pilrig Place. In the garden where there is now a sunken garden,it is believed there used to be reservoir.
An interesting feature of the house is the sundial on the patio wall -it is made for the Northern hemisphere and therefore shows ten o'clock to be two o'clock.
Pilrig House is a National Monument and it is believed that the name comes from a Suburb in Edinburgh. It is a good example of the artsand crafts style: very simple, good proportions, use of natural materials like stone, sand and timber, and the result is a very attractive house.
Baker's work at Pilrig demonstrates the use of local materials and manual finishes, something that was in accordance with Milner's wishes to establish locally "a better and more permanent order of architecture". It was declared a National Monument under old NMC legislation on 27 May 1988.
