Khoikhoi matjieshuis
A traveller who arrived in the Cape Colony in the first or second decade of the nineteenth century would have been able to identify several distinctive styles of architecture. First there were the matjieshuise of the Khoikhoi, who built dome-like structures of reeds, branches, grass and sometimes skins. Some of them can still be seen today in the Port Nolloth area. Towards the east, the rondavel-type huts of the Xhosa dotted the hills and plains of the land across the Fish River.
In the southwestern Cape, particularly on the wine farms, the Cape Dutch architecture could be found.
Xhose rondawel-type hut
By the end of the nineteenth century it was described by Sir Herbert Baker, architect of the Union Buildings, as ‘surely the most beautiful residential architecture in the world’. Unlike the indigenous matjieshuise and Xhosa huts, Cape Dutch architecture was a blend of ingredients from Europe, Africa and the Dutch Indies. It was at its most attractive when the house was built on a wine farm in a spacious yard amidst gardens, oak trees and vineyards, with a mountain as backdrop.
The mansion at Morgenster, near Somerset West, a typical example of Cape Dutch architecture
Many of these houses were built by artisans who came from the East as slaves. In the absence of hard brick, the houses had to be built with inferior walling material (rubble, clay and unburnt brick) and were nearly always covered with lime plaster. The building materials determined the form and structure. They provided for walls with vertical but little lateral strength and forced on the builder a roof span limited to six metres. Two or three rooms of that width were strung in a row on the model of the longhouse tradition of northwestern Europe (several rooms parallel to the street front). Wings were added on later and led to letters-of-the-alphabet plans (H-plan and T-plan). In contrast to the gables in the Netherlands that covered the entire narrow front of a house, the Cape Dutch gable was in the middle of the front wall with a long thatched roof covering it. The single most distinctive feature of the architecture, the gable, not only kept the front door drip free, but also allowed light into the attic through the dormer window. Decorations were in malleable plaster.
The curvilinear Baroque/Rococo gable of the second half of the eighteenth century was replaced by a
A typical house or hartebeest hut of a trekboer
rectilinear Neoclassicism with plastered pediments and pilasters.
The oldest existing Cape Dutch gable is to be found on Joos tenburg, near Paarl (1756). The most outstanding examples of Cape Dutch architecture include Morgenster near Somerset West (1786), La Provence near Franschhoek (1800) and Schoongezicht near Stellenbosch (1814).
