Little Stream Conference Centre & Tea Garden

The connection between Muriel Jones and Cape Town YMCA

Muriel Jones (1890–1974) was a South-African philanthropist. In Cape Town, she became a member of the National Council of Women of South Africa and was elected Life Vice President in 1963. She danced with the University of Cape Town (UCT) Ballet, with whom she took a tour to Rhodesia in 1956. She was involved with many charitable activities.

Among other things, she was an early activist for enhancing the living conditions in Cape Town slums. In 1939 she was portrayed as thinking about the three basic problems in the slums: juvenile delinquency, intemperance and marijuana. She was active in rising the housing standard in the slums. After the Second World War, she corresponded with The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists in Post-War America. During a visit to the United States in 1945, in an interview referencing wine, drunkenness and land prices in South Africa she was described as: 'a charming personality and delightful conversationalist' Lodi News Sentinel, 7 December 1945. She was married to Harold Higgs Jones (1888-1968). At her death she left a house to the Young Men's Christian Association, that is now the Little Stream Conference Centre in Cape Town. When Mr and Mrs Jones bought Little Streams it was completely undeveloped land. Mrs Jones, in her indefatigable fashion, set about radical transformation, creating terraces and paths, dredging the muddy little stream below the house, putting in trees which were already nearly full-grown! Nobody could not believe her courage in doing all of this. Her energy seemed endless. They had no children, so of course she had the time. They were well-off, so they had the money. All the same, she stayed with her vision of what this place could be and she made it happen.