Panmure was a village on the eastern bank of the Buffalo River, opposite East London. It was created in May 1857 to accommodate part of the British German Legion in British Kaffraria, and was named after Lord Panmure, the British Secretary for War (1855-58). The village was laid out by Sir George Pomeroy Colley.

There is confusion, however, as to what part of present day East London constitutes the original Panmure. It is commonly believed that Panmure was that area of the town to the north of Union Street and incorporating North End and a part of Southernwood. If one looks at Colley's original map of Panmure, however, one sees

See also: More on this subject The original map of Panmure, 1857 East London British Kaffraria British German Legion Lieutenant Pomeroy Colley

clearly that this was not so. Panmure was in reality that part of today's Central Business District between Union Street and South Street. The area to the north of Union Street was merely Ward 3 of the East London Municipality which, in 1881, was given the temporary title of "the Panmure Ward", thereby causing historic confusion.

Dr Keith Tankard

Panmure was a village on the eastern bank of the Buffalo River, opposite East London. It was created in May 1857 to accommodate part of the British German Legion in British Kaffraria, and was named after Lord Panmure, the British Secretary for War (1855-58).

The original scheme was to settle the German soldiers on the western bank of the river but a lack of water made the authorities abandon that plan in favour of using the eastern bank. Two villages were then established, namely Panmure and Cambridge, the latter being further inland. The soldiers were also given one-acre lots at what later became known as North End and Southernwood, as well as ten-acre agricultural lots along the Nahoon River.

The original plan for Panmure was drawn by Lieutenant Pomeroy Colley although the German soldiers already settled there gave him great difficulty in his task of surveying the land. The village nestled between South and Union Streets, and between what later became known as Station and Buffalo Streets.

The boundaries of Panmure have become one of the most inaccurately understood phenomena in the history of East London. Bruce Gordon, a schoolmaster who conducted the first extensive research on the port's history in his 1932 Master's Thesis, argued that what he termed "East London (East Bank)" was that part of the town to the south of Union Street, while "Panmure" lay to the north of Union Street, and included the suburb of North End and part of Southernwood.

There is no truth in this argument. Gordon was clearly confusing the original village of Panmure with Ward 3 of the East London municipality, a ward that was created only in 1881 and was named "Panmure" for want of a better title.

When a municipality was created at East London in 1873, it incorporated the two villages on the banks of the Buffalo River, but not the German acre lots to the north of Panmure. The term East London thereupon became problematic because it referred both to the original village on the western bank and to the municipality as a whole. Because of that difficulty, the name "West Bank" became the accepted designation for the original village while "East London" now came to be used only when referring to the town in general.

The municipality was thereupon divided into two wards, which were called West Bank (Ward 1) and East Bank (Ward 2). The name "Panmure" ceased to be used in official records, although the townspeople continued to use the term generally for the eastern sector of the town. In that way, for instance, the Eastern Beach was commonly called "Panmure Beach".

Up until the mid-1870s, the West Bank remained the centre of the municipality. That was where the Magistrate had his offices, and it was where the municipal commissioners met. Its population also exceeded that of the East Bank, and so Ward 1 was entitled to three municipal commissioners as opposed to the two who represented Panmure.

The town's centre of gravity altered radically, however, once the Queenstown Railway was built and it was decided to place the terminus at Panmure to save on the expense of having to bridge the Buffalo River to reach the West Bank. A branch line was thereupon laid to the harbour and followed the Quigney River from the station to the eastern bank of the Buffalo. The Harbour Works naturally responded by placing wharves on the eastern bank to facilitate transportation to the inland market.

Because East London was essentially a trading town, the merchants who had originally established themselves on the West Bank slowly began to move their businesses to Panmure. The value of land on the East Bank therefore escalated and Panmure developed rapidly beyond its original boundary of Union Street. The growth of the East Bank was further augmented when the German acre lots at North End and Southernwood were added to the municipality in 1876.

By the time the first Municipal Board had reached the end of its triennial term, therefore, the population of Panmure was already larger than that of the West Bank and the new municipal regulations published in February 1877 made allowance for that growth. It increased the total membership of the Board to ten, with five commissioners to represent each ward.

The eastern sector of the town was growing at such a pace, however, that it soon became necessary to redraw the municipal boundaries once again. The Incorporation Act of 1880 divided the municipality into three wards, each with four representatives in the Council. Ward 1 (West Bank) remained unchanged in definition but lost one councillor. Ward 2, on the other hand, was sub-divided and a line following Union Street, extended to the Buffalo River in the west and to the sea in the east, became the boundary between the two new wards.

Ward 2 now encompassed only the centre of town, the heart of the original village of Panmure. Ward 3, on the other hand, incorporated the area to the north of Union Street but the question of giving a name to Ward 3 proved problematic. Wards 1 and 2 retained their original ward titles of West Bank and East Bank but it was decided to use the term "Panmure" for Ward 3, despite the fact that scarcely any part of that ward had ever been contained in the original village of Panmure.

Dr Keith Tankard