Yesterday afternoon, along with his widow Isobel, a small group of historians gathered at 7 Castle Hill for the launch.

“Les collected a huge amount of genealogy, charts and stuff like that rather late in life and decided to write a book about South End,” said genealogist and co-publisher Liz Eshmade.

“He set about collecting information and gathered a large quantity of photos and brochures and all kinds of things like that.

“After he died, the box (containing) all his stuff did the rounds, going to people who thought they might be able to do something with it,” she said.

But nobody did anything until historian Jenny Bennie began looking for information she needed. She heard somebody had the collection, and convinced them to hand the information over to her.

“We went through all the documents, put them together, and made up a file of all the pictures, all the bits and pieces like people and places and everything to do with South End,” said Eshmade.

“We discovered Les had been through all the street directories for 100 years, wherever they were available, and picked out everybody who lived in South End.

“He created a directory of street addresses (covering) the years people lived there (prior to 1972).

“It pretty well covers the whole existence of South End,” she said.

Eshmade and Bennie decided the information should be made available to the general public, so they set about putting the book together.

“We thought it would be nice to pick out Les’s reminiscences, which were in his file, about different aspects of life in South End,” Eshmade said.

“In some cases they were pictures taken during his walks through what was left of South End,” she said.

The result, South End Street Directories, is all Les’s work.

“We just put it together. It took rather a long time.

“We are rather glad it is finished now.”

Copies of the book, which are printed to order, cost R170, and can be obtained from the 7 Castle Hill museum.