Strathaven is a hilly

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

. Strathaven is an affluent north-west suburb, largely known for its

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholes ...

and shopping amenities and is bounded to the west by the suburb of Sentosa, Monovale to the south and to the east and the north by Avondale and Avondale West. Like much of the northwest, the streets feature tree-lined avenues, which give the area a distinctive,

garden suburb The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, industry, an ...

feel.

History

Strathaven was established in 1902 and named by Thomas Meikle of the prominent Scottish-Zimbabwean, Meikle family, after his hometown of

Strathaven Strathaven ( ; from ) is a historic market town in South Lanarkshire, Scotland and is the largest settlement in Avondale. It is south of Hamilton. The Powmillon Burn runs through the town centre, and joins the Avon Water to the east of the to ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. Thomas Meikle was one of the members of the infamous ‘Looting Committee’, created to steal Ndebele cattle, as punishment after the 1893 War of Dispossession or

First Matabele War The First Matabele War was fought between 1893 and 1894 in modern-day Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele (Matabele) Kingdom. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, had tried to avoid outright war with the compa ...

. The majority of the cattle awarded to Meikle was used as capital for the Meikles business ventures which including the Meikles Hotel in Harare, Cape Grace in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

and what was to become Strathaven. More than 350 000 cattle were looted by Meikle and his Looting Committee from the Ndebele people.

Retail

There are several shopping centres and office parks in the area, especially along Suffolk Drive, which connects the suburb with the larger, Avondale. These include such as the Strathaven Shopping Centre, Amor Christian Trade Shopping Centre and the TM Supermarket head offices. Strathaven also has an emerging restaurant scene, with most restaurants and

cafe A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café (), is an establishment that serves various types of coffee, espresso, latte, americano and cappuccino, among other hot beverages. Many coffeehouses in West Asia offer ''shisha'' (actually called ''nargil ...

s amid the

antique shop An antique shop (or antiques shop) is a retail store specializing in the selling of antiques. Antiques shops generally have a physical presence in a shop where the wares are stored and displayed, but some antique shops are online, with no phy ...

s on Suffolk and Browing Drives. There is also an annual Spring festival on the opening weekend of September.

References

{{Authority control Suburbs of Harare Harare