Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa VASSA Journal
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa VASSA Journal Number 28 December 2013 Contents Page Recording on the northern frontier: The Bokkeveld case study: Tim Maggs & Nigel Amschwand 1 The vernacular art of Erich Mayer – then and now: Nigel Amschwand 12 A short architectural history of the Schotschekloof homestead, Cape Town: Jim Hislop 21 Cover illustration Erich Mayer: A winter plaas in the Onder-Bokkeveld, 1930 (private collection). The Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa is not responsible for authors’ opinions or factual errors contained in contributions. © Vernacular Architecture Society of SA Recording on the northern frontier: The Bokkeveld case study Tim Maggs & Nigel Amschwand We would like to dedicate this contribution to the memory of Guido Lugtenburg. Starting in the new millennium from small serendipitous events, the Onder-Bokkeveld Project grew into one of VASSA’s major recording and research activities of the decade. The team comprised a multi-disciplinary group of enthusiastic volunteers well capable of recovering both the tangible and intangible heritage of the group of remarkable farms in the vicinity of Nieuwoudtville in the Northern Cape. Activities included not only weekend field trips but also planning meetings, a newsletter, archival research, many interviews and the assembly of an archive. As the Project developed our enthusiasm perhaps led us to somewhat overreach what was practicable under the circumstances. We began to visualise additional avenues of research that would require funding and commitments of time greater than some members were able to spare. Some of our hopes were therefore not reached, yet the project has assembled a substantial archive and, though the team has shrunk, the number of publications has continued to grow (see list at end of paper). The two of us came to be involved in rather different ways. Nigel Amschwand (NA) was already interested in the journals of early travellers in the area and had been following their routes to see what remained from their time. Tim Maggs (TM), recently retired as an archaeologist, bumped into an old friend, Julia Meintjes who, with her husband Willem Strydom, had restored and were living in part of an old farmstead in the Onder-Bokkeveld. They were very concerned about the deterioration of these werwe so Julia was put in touch with Antonia Malan who promptly bounced the ball back into TM’s court. Antonia also told NA about the buildings, some of which he had visited the previous weekend. The two of us therefore did a recce trip in 1999 when Julia and Willem showed us a number of complex but dilapidated farmsteads, none of which had been recorded in detail though Hans Fransen and others had done some photography. We could do little to prevent further deterioration of most of these old buildings and therefore decided to start a program of recording. Returning to the next ‘Vernacs’ meeting we asked for volunteers and thus the team was formed. During recording trips in the field we were also joined by a number of local people thanks to the efforts of Julia and Willem. A number of lasting friendships have emerged from the project. A typical day’s recording would see two teams led by architects tackling the buildings one by one while a third team surveyed the whole werf. Others would be conducting interviews in the neighbourhood and taking photographs. To quote from our first publication: The project covers individual buildings, styles, raw materials and how these differ from the vernacular of other areas. We are interested in the composition of the werf and how this fits into the landscape. Following recent VASSA policy, we are also particularly interested in the people of 1 the farms and their lifestyles; not just the owners but also the landless classes of people who made a contribution to farm histories (Amschwand 2001: 1). To appreciate the special nature of these Onder-Bokkeveld farms it is necessary to place them in their unique environmental setting. The name Onder-Bokkeveld has been used to denote this area since the early eighteenth century, but it should not be confused with the Koue and Warm Bokkeveld areas which are much further south, around Ceres. Our Bokkeveld centres on the town of Nieuwoudtville, and is an elevated and relatively well-watered plateau surrounded by much less hospitable landscapes (Fig. 1). Its western edge is the dramatic Bokkeveld escarpment which plunges steeply down to the Knersvlakte desert. To the north and east the plateau gives way to semi-arid Karoo, while to the south the land becomes deeply dissected by dry valleys leading down to the Doorn River canyon. From north to south it extends 65 km and from east to west about 35 km. Figure 1. Section of a late 19th century map of the Cape Colony with the Onder-Bokkeveld framed. (CA Map 1/342). 2 The Onder-Bokkeveld must always have been recognised as a green island in an arid sea. For the colonial frontiersmen it offered a patch suitable for grain cultivation surrounded by areas at best suited only for extensive grazing. The colonial frontier reached here early in the eighteenth century. The inevitable clash between colonists and indigenous people led to warfare in the late 1730s, still remembered in the local name, Oorlogskloof, where a skirmish took place when a commando attacked a group of Khoi thought to be cattle thieves. Colonists started to establish themselves here in the early 1740s and soon thereafter the first loan places began to be registered. These all occurred at the best water sources as can be seen from the names; nearly all have the appendage Fontein or Rivier. This water monopoly would have greatly marginalised the remaining previous inhabitants, those who had not fled to the north beyond the colonial border. Figure 2. Early farm registrations (base map courtesy of the Chief Directorate, Surveys and Land Information). 3 While the project did not set out to examine the pre-colonial past of the area we did come across some evidence (Figs 3 and 4). Both rock paintings and scatters of Cape coastal pottery, with the characteristic lugs associated with Khoisan herders of the second millennium, show that the Onder-Bokkeveld had long been a magnet for settlement. We also found some alignments of stone forming rough enclosures which may also have been the work of pre-colonial people. Figure 3. Pottery shards found during a surface investigation. Figure 4. What is thought to be pre-colonial walling for a stock enclosure. 4 A significant resource for the project arose from the longstanding interests that NA had in establishing the routes taken by early travellers through this region. Working from the travellers’ descriptions of their journeys, aided by botanical clues, early loan farm grants and genealogical tables, it was possible to accurately trace the routes taken. The fascination was to see how botanists, such as Thunberg and Masson, were passed along to relatives deep in the Cape interior by those living nearer civilization. The intermarriage of families to keep farms from being split up and the relationships between the relatively rich farm owners and the relatively poorer bywooner class showed what social conditions were like. Most of this information came from research in the Cape Archives in Roeland Street. As is usual with such records they are only written from one point of view, that of the ruling class. This is even truer of relationships between the colonists and the original inhabitants, the Khoisan. However, occasionally one comes across a gem, such as a letter from a “Baster” farm supervisor complaining that although the local Veldcornet insists that he reports for commando duty, his employer refuses to release him and he is stuck in the middle. Archival sources on farm boundaries provided the earliest surveys. These date from around 1820 when the British administration was converting the Dutch East India Company (VOC) system of loan-place land tenure to perpetual quit-rent. In the VOC period, loan farms were not surveyed but merely described by a name and location, for instance being called Avontuur over the Oliphant’s and Doorn Rivers. From a central point, usually the water source, the farm extended in a half-hour’s walk in every direction, thus creating a circular farm with at least one hours walk between neighbours. In practice this did not always work out and in the case of a serious conflict those encroached upon could complain to the Veldcornet and in some cases the offending grant was cancelled. In other cases there was room at other edges of the farm for the farmer to expand into. Over time, the half-hour’s walk became standardised as being 750 Cape roods (2833.5 m) from the central point, giving a farm an extent of about 3000 morgen. The unique VOC pattern of circular farms proved a nightmare to the surveyors who had to convert these to straight-line boundaries based on trigonometrical measurements. Fortunately these first surveys also recorded the theoretical circular boundaries with their central opstal (structures). By assembling these surveys for the whole block of Bokkeveld farms NA has been able to reposition the circular loan-places on the broader landscape and thus create an early 19th century map of land tenure for the area (Fig. 2). This was done literally by cut and paste whereas now you can use Geographical Information Systems. The basic recording work progressed, farm by farm, and the resulting archive now covers most of the older Bokkeveld farmsteads. Architecturally they show a typical though simple Cape vernacular with undecorated gables or wolfneus ends to the buildings. There are some langhuis structures, while the more elaborate houses tend to be T or H shaped.