Dark Matters

Almost invisible beyond the bustle of a busy street, this enchanting Parktown North home proves that romance can exist in the most unexpected places

- Graham Wood

There’s something undeniably romantic about Christian van der Walt and Anli Jones’ Parktown North home in Johannesburg. Part of that impression is created by the surprise of finding it where it is: at the end of a long, narrow, bumpy driveway, the entrance to which is hidden in plain sight among shops, offices and restaurants that are situated on one of the suburb’s busiest streets.

Arriving there is a little like slipping through a chink in the fabric of ordinary life, and suddenly finding yourself in a mystical secret garden. Who knew that all the while, somewhere behind the street’s familiar facade, there exists a parallel world, where lavender lines the borders of a sweet smelling, tree-filled paradise, bees from a pair of hives buzz around a lush vegetable patch and half a dozen quails trot about their coop, as owls haunt the neighbouring oak trees?

The whimsical ambience is exaggerated by the proportions of the property’s castle-like house. Before moving here, Christian lived in Killarney’s Whitehall Court, which is probably the best example of neoclassical architecture in the city, and whose volumes and details left him with a taste for lofty rooms. Add to that the fact that before they moved here, Christian and Anli had bought a high, slim antique metal door from a nearby vintage shop that they were determined to use, and the high ceilings became an inevitability.