Two remarkable heritage homes for sale:
No. 7 and No. 9 Colin Fraser Street,
Philippolis
A quick synopsis
The oldest built structures in Philippolis, with rare exceptions, date from the early 1860s when the Free State Republic took final possession of the town from the Griqua kingdom. These early dwellings tended to be very modest structures often comprising only two small rooms. A visitor to the town in 1871 remarked that it was virtually deserted, the townsfolk having all left to try their luck on the newly discovered diamond fields at what came to be known as Kimberley.
The early 1870s saw the erection of much more ostentatious homesteads, almost certainly financed with wealth derived from the diamond fields boom. No. 7 Colin Fraser Street (the “Van der Post House”) was built in 1874 by one Joseph Beddy, brother to William who was the General Manager of the Jagersfontein Diamond Mine. A photograph from 1894 shows that, at that time, the house was without gables.
With the outbreak of hostilities in the 1899 Anglo-Boer War, the Beddy family moved to Beaufort West after burying their family silver in the garden (this according to the late Rev. Arthur Beddy, Joseph’s grandson). As far as is known this silver was never recovered.
CWH van der Post, an extremely affluent law agent and close confidante of William Beddy, had been exiled to Stellenbosch during the Boer War and was only given leave to return to the Free State in 1906. It was at this stage that the house came to be associated with the van der Post family, from August 1906. On the 13th of December 1906, Sir Laurens van der Post (the well-known author) was born in the front bedroom.
CWH van der Post was a prosperous landowner and he modified the house to conform to the pretensions of Stellenbosch gentry. This included erecting Cape Dutch gables. Due to the large size of his family, he also acquired the adjacent house (now No. 9 Colin Fraser St.) and relocated his office there from the more modest rooms inside No. 7’s wagon house.
This wagon house is a considerable structure in its own right and is thought to pre-date the adjoining houses. It may in fact have belonged to Adam Kok, the Griqua chief. At that time, the erf may have been an extension of Adam Kok’s house in Voortrekker Street.
In 1912, the Van der Posts added gables to No. 9 Colin Fraser Street. They built a passageway linking the houses, with small replica gables. The tiled flooring is all that remains of this passage.
The Van der Post family lived in the complex after the death of CWH vd Post in 1914, until about 1922. Then the houses were run as boarding houses by Mrs Wentworth, seemingly on behalf of Mrs van der Post who had gone to live on the family farm, Wolwekop.
In the early 1920s, No. 7 Colin Fraser Street was sold to Mrs Rothbart who converted parts of the wagonhouse into a synagogue, a schul, and a boarding school for Jewish boys (the boys slept in the loft).
In the late 1930s, the house passed into the hands of a Mr Schoeman, ironically a member of the neo-Nazi Ossewabrandwag. The loft was then used as a secret meeting place by this organisation.
The house changed hands regularly over the years. It stood vacant for 12 years between 1966 and 1978, due to the general depopulation of the platteland and the fact that the main road to Cape Town from the Reef, which used to pass through Philippolis, was shifted some 50km to the east in the early 1970s.
The house was acquired in 1988 by a retired English policeman from Burma, Mr John McArdle. He heard rumours of its having been associated with the Van der Post family, and contacted Sir Laurens van der Post to verify this. Sir Laurens subsequently visited the house on two occasions. He had apparently been under the impression the house had been demolished. McArdle applied to have the house declared a National Monument and this was formalised in 1990.
The present owners have been in possession of the house since 1994. In 1996 they acquired No. 9 Colin Fraser Street, and the houses were therefore reunited, conceptually if not physically, for the first time in 70 years. The house has been variously used as a residence and as a guesthouse. At present it houses the Karoo Institute.
The houses are fine examples of Victorian Karoo architecture. The extensive garden still yields up old horseshoes, spent bullet cartridges, and pieces of pottery. There is documentary evidence that a British soldier is buried somewhere in the backyard, and some of Sir Laurens’s ashes were buried under one of the old trees. Van der Post’s literary output has many allusions to the house, as well as some recognisable descriptions of the property. The house has featured in a number of TV documentaries. It has also provided the inspiration for settings in one of Afrikaner writer Karel Schoeman’s novels (Verliesfontein), and has featured in scholarly articles dealing with heritage issues.