The suburb has its origins as part of the Braamfontein farm which was owned by Hermann Eckstein.

[2] He had bought the farm to explore it for minerals and when he failed to find any, the land was converted as a timber plantation in 1891 called Sachsenwald after Otto von Bismarck's estate.

[2] The land's name was anglicized at the beginning of World War One and was called Saxonwold.

The remaining land in the plantation was developed into a township called Saxonwold in 1925 by the Transvaal Consolidated Land & Exploration Co Ltd.[2] The streets were laid out to view the Rand Regiments Memorial with instructions to home builders not to impede the view of the memorial and the street names having an old Anglo-Saxon theme and ended in wold.

[4] The South African National Museum of Military History and the Anglo-Boer War Memorial are also located in Saxonwold.