Playing the tourist on our own doorstep – Western Cape’s SWARTLAND area - Hawksmoor House

According to the original document hanging in Hawksmoor House the land was deeded in 1692 by Simon Van Der Stel the then Governor of the Cape. Researching the archives the only found recorded deed is dated 28 June 1701 signed by Willem Adriaan Van Der Stel.

The original title deed signed by Simon Van Der Stel

The farm was deeded to Reverend Hercules Van Loon who named the farm Waarburg after Wartburg Castle, Eisenach in Germany where Martin Luther was brought to be isolated. He, Reverend Hercules, was well related and got the farm through a nepotism posting, to which he was not well suited.

He was so unhappy at this posting that, while riding his horse on the way back to his farm, he committed suicide in front of his servants by slitting his own throat with a pen knife…... astounding !!

I messed up by deleting the outside images of this farm house. This is the patio (stoep) which they now serve breakfast on.

The land was bequeathed to his widow and thereafter there were numerous owners, 25 in total over a period of 310 years. In 1812 for a brief period the owner was Piet Retief, a well respected leader of the Voortrekkers, who was later murdered by the Zulu leader Dingaan!! A significant part of the boerevolk history##

Simon van der Stel left the Cape (Cape Town) to establish his own community which he named after himself…. Stellenbosch.

The farmhouse is a national Heritage site and is still very much as it was in the 18th century. The present owners are very much into antiquities, clearly reflected in the following photographs

The original built in cupboard… can you believe this is over 300 years old?

The oven / stove to the right dates back many years ( unfortunately our hostess did not know if it was the original or not)

The communal table where dinner was served. This is still the practice at the establishment and we shared our dinner table with a couple from Hamburg Germany, and a couple and their father from Rumania

An Item of interest, a skull depicting Phrenology ‘sensitive areas’, a map of the mind so to say.

An antique chair, purportedly brought from England in the 19th Century

A really old piano

The farm is 477 Hectares (4.77 square kilometers)… and in the past was used for growing different crops. These crops were as disparate as cattle farming, cereal crops and probably the most lucrative…tobacco !! Today the farm produces grapes from which they produce their own label Hawksmoor Wines. We sampled a bottle while there…decent but not rushing to the export bandwagon…my opinion.

View from the patio

The Hottentot Hollands mountain range in the distance and between Hawksmoor and there is Stellenbosch

Beautiful lavender

There is so much more to this story but to keep it within a readable blog I have left a lot out…. I assume the more I blog the better I will be at getting the pertinent stuff across while being brief