My small son and I took a leisurely drive through the Cape Winelands recently. As we passed yet another gracious farmstead with its curved whitewashed gables and neatly thatched roofs, he asked, “Mom, what are those fancy houses called? And why do they all have curly bits on them?”
Back home, we did some research on the background of Cape Dutch architecture and discovered that apart from the obvious connection to the early Dutch settlers in the area, the style also contains German, French Huguenot and Indonesian influences.
At first, the settlers built basic solid houses using the available materials. Walls were made from mud and manure, painted with lime (made from incinerated seashells) mixed with water, fat and salt. This substance not only made the walls waterproof, it also added to the support of the whole structure! Houses had to be whitewashed every year and this became an annual tradition involving the entire household each Christmas, lending a local flavour to the term "White Christmas".
The roofs were thatched with dried wild reeds. These early houses were not "fancy" at all and consisted of just three simple rooms in a row. The steeply pitched roof may have been modelled on the European style of roofing that encouraged snow to slide off easily – something not much needed in sunny South Africa! The thick walls, however, were well-suited for keeping the heat out and the coolness in.
The archetypal gables that we associate with Cape Dutch architecture today were a later addition, often the work of skilled Malay craftsmen. This fashion began in the early 1700s, with the addition of wings over the following century eventually culminating in the U- T- and H-plan houses we see throughout the region today.
The H-plan became the design on which some of the most elegant farmsteads were based. Klippe Rivier Country House in Swellendam (pictured above), built circa 1820 to 1825, is a prime example of fine Cape Dutch architecture.
Klippe Rivie's gable design is attributed to Louis-Michael Thibault, who studied at the l'Acedemie Royale d'Architecture in Paris, and is considered to be one of the foremost architects in the Cape in the late 1700's. It is generally accepted that the Cape gable was influenced by a similar design trend which was extremely prevalent in Flanders and Holland.
For more information on Cape Dutch Architecture and luxury holiday accommodation in a beautiful Cape Dutch homestead in Swellendam read on.
An excellent resource book on historic Cape architecture, The Old Houses of the Cape by Fransen & Cook, is available at Amazon.
(Images: Joy-Anne Goodenough. Creative Commons License)
