Benoni Bygones: When post offices were in their heyday
Over the years, the Benoni Post Office was moved to various locations and a number of branch offices were opened.
The City Times is proud to revive a monthly history piece compiled by local history enthusiast
Glynis Cox Millett-Clay, which she has named Benoni Bygones.
A postal agency was established on May 12, 1891, in the Benoni region to serve the mining community in the area.
The first post office opened in 1898, closed again in 1899 due to the Anglo Boer War and reopened on August 1, 1901.
It was on the eastern side of ‘Snake Road’, which ran from the Benoni Hotel to the upper side of the Kleinfontein mine dump.
It was believed that there were 100 post office boxes at the time.
In 1902, the post office moved to a wood-and-iron cottage close to the house of the underground manager of the New Kleinfontein Mining Company, and it was here that John Harrison, a journeyman on the mine, hired the post office box number 44.
ALSO READ: Benoni Bygones: How our city became know as a place ‘where strikes were born’
His post office box stayed in the family for 76 years. His daughter, Mrs E Graham, continued to hire it until January 1981, at which point she felt the expense was no longer justified.
This story did not appear in the Guinness Book of Records but it surely was a Benoni record for post box hire.
After the stands for the Benoni Township were sold in March 1904, a new post office was built on the corner of Taylor Street and Cranbourne Avenue, adjoining the Standard Bank.
It was this building that was besieged by the warring miners in the 1922 strike.
In 1927, the post office moved into a building on the corner of Prince’s Avenue and Horsfall Street, which was also used as a courthouse.
A bomb was placed in this building in May 1942, which caused considerable damage when it exploded and injured a passer-by.
It is believed this was the man who planted the bomb and he was injured because the bomb exploded prematurely.
Over the years, the Benoni Post Office was moved to various locations and a number of branch offices were opened, including a mobile post office, which was inaugurated on March 23, 1982.
The following post offices were opened in Benoni:
• Actonville (March 14, 1985)
• Wattville (1952)
• Jatniel (1969)
• Farrarmere (1972, in the shopping centre in Bayley Street)
• Benoryn post office and telephone exchange (1971, in O’Reilly Merry Street)
• Rynfield (1961, in Pretoria Road)
• Daveyton (1958)
• Airex (1955, in a small shopping centre in Aerodrome Drive and closed in 1973)
• Benoni-West (1954, in Elston Avenue)
• Benoni South (1953)
• Northmead (1939-1972, moved to 6th Avenue in 1972-1984 and to two positions in the Northmead Mall)
• Putfontein (1923)
• Petit (1922, one week before Christmas)
• Brentwood Park (1920, as Brentwood then renamed to Brentwood Park in 1926)
• Dunswart (1911)
• Kleinfontein (1910, the year of the declaration of the Union of South Africa and closed on March 13, 1967)
• Van Ryn (1907-1974)
• Benoni Station Post Office was first known as Benoni Junction Rail Post Office then renamed Benoni Rail Post Office on June 1, 1905
• Benoni Mobile Post Office (inaugurated on March 23, 1982)
• Benoni Post Office (1909, in Taylor Street, which does not exist anymore)
(Sources: Encyclopaedia of SA Post Offices and Postal Agencies and BCT dated Feb 1981/drawings: The Late LJ van Riet/typed, story and grammar: Glynis Cox Millett-Clay/date July 9, 2017/updated September 2024).
ALSO READ: BENONI BYGONES: The Bedford Hotel, established in 1918
