Ferreira Mine Stope

In the basement of the Standard Bank headquarters in downtown Joburg, is Ferreira's mine stope, one of the very first gold prospecting sites in the city. The long forgotten mine entrance was discovered in the 1980s during the construction of the Standard Bank building and it has since been preserved as a small museum. The stope is named for Ignatius Phillip Ferreira, a farmer, soldier and later a gold prospector, who also has a city district, Ferreirasdorp, named after him. A small exhibition illustrated by photographs and old maps details how the very first prospectors, including Ferreira, operated and there are also various pieces of old-fashioned mining equipment such as gas lamps and pickaxes.