Westville, Durban

The great thing about Westville is its accessibility to Durban, whilst still managing to remain a quiet and beautiful residential suburb.

Lying between Sherwood and Pinetown, Westville is only 15 minutes’ from the city centre yet set amongst rolling hills, gardens peppered by meandering streams, and tree-lined streets that bring you even closer to attractions like the Pavilion shopping centre and Pietermaritzburg.

Westville has always served as a gentrified, slower paced suburb of Durban - possibly because of its history as farming land during the early 1920s, and it is here that people head for more of a ‘country’ lifestyle. It may not evoke quite the beauty of Hillcrest, but the homes here are set on large properties, most of them with precipitous driveways of some description because of the hills, and it has remained affordable through the property boom that has hit the country.

Westville has become quite a business centre and office parks have attracted a few major companies and professional firms enjoy it out here, where it is slightly cooler than Durban and bounded by the N3 and M19, making their offices accessible.

The Westville campus of the University of KwaZulu Natal is situated in the suburb and, aside from being a rather pretty campus, also boasts a Hindu temple and an Islamic place of worship - a reflection of its multi-cultural student body, who come here to study science, engineering, humanities and social science, among other degrees.