South African Travel Guide: ‘Gem of the Karoo’ in a spacious mountain setting continued

South African Travel Guide: ‘Gem of the Karoo’ in a spacious mountain setting continued November 6, 2008

Posted by dodo in : Art Gallery, Europe, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Money, Museum, South Africa, Tour , trackback

Reinet House is now a superb period house museum, containing some of the personal possessions of the Murrays, and many fascinating domestic items. There is also a display on the town’s Reinet dolls. These were first made during World War I when many luxury imports, including dolls, could not be obtained.

In the back yard of Reinet House there is a reconstructed water mill, which can be operated by inserting a coin, and nearby is the old Black Acorn vine planted in 1870 by Charles Murray — believed to have been the thickest in the world until dead wood was removed in 1983.

From the front door of Reinet House you can see the classic facade of the old Drostdy with the Camdeboo Mountains behind. Return to Parsonage Street, looking right as you cross Murray Street to see the old gunpowder store on Magazine Hill, which was carefully sited outside the town limits in 1831.

Walk along the northern side of Parsonage Street, where most of the little houses as far as Cross Street date from the mid-19th century. Number 18, at the corner of Cross Street, has a curiously ‘detached’ gable, and small-paned windows with old glass that produces distorted reflections.

Turn right into Cross Street, which contains a number of simple, old buildings. On the corner of Somerset Street, on your left, is the St James (Anglican) Church (6), consecrated in 1850. The original church forms the nave of the present building, and is the portion under the higher section of the roof. The church contains beautiful woodwork, and many memorials dating from the AngloBoer War.

Victorian beauties

Turn left into Somerset Street. Next to the church is the parish hall and the rectory — which has something of a doll’s house quality — both of which date from 1895. Opposite is a long, two-gabled building (7) with a verandah with ornately fretted woodwork, and windows with elaborate glazing.

Cross Somerset Street towards numbers 22 and 24, which form a single unit with three doors and rounded windows on the street frontage. Number 26 shows fretted wooden railings and pillars, with much tracery-work below the eaves; while number 28, on the corner of Te Water Street, is a much-altered Victorian double-storey with a hoisting beam to raise goods to the attic.

Turn right into Te Water Street, a short street of small cottages. At the end of the street you emerge on to Church Square, passing the building of the Graaff-Reinet Club (8) on your right. This rather grand building was built in 1881 as a social club after the town authorities refused permission to open a ’smoking parlour’ in Parsonage Street.

About three metres before you reach Caledon Street you can see to your left the chimney protruding from the Dutch Reformed Church (9) between the main and end sections. Chimneys rarely form part of ecclesiastical architecture, but the church elders required a fireplace in their consistory.

Before crossing to the church, walk north towards the Mayor’s Garden (10), with its war memorial, and beyond it the stone Town Hall (11), built in 1910 and known as the Victoria Hall.

The Dutch Reformed Church is open to visitors during normal business hours and, on request, the collection of valuable Cape silver will be unlocked for viewing. In the consistory there are portraits of all the clergymen who have served the congregation, starting in 1792 with the Reverend van Manger. The church, consecrated in 1887, was built in the Gothic Revival style, and is known as the ‘groot kerk’ (big church) to distinguish it from the ‘nuwe kerk’ (new church).

Leave the church and walk along the left (eastern) side of Church Street. You pass a bank (12) on your left that was originally the Standard Bank of British South Africa in 1874. Beyond this is a long row of newspaper offices.

Karoo fossils and San art

On the corner of Somerset Street, also on your left, is Te Water House (13), built in 1818. It was formerly thatched, but now has an iron roof and clipped gables. It is one of the few old South African houses with an underground wine cellar, and was once the homestead of a wine estate.

Cross Somerset Street, and pass on your left the Information Office and Reinet Museum (14), housed in the town’s first library of 1847. On display are collections of period costume, fossil remains of Karoo reptiles of 200 million years ago, and carefully executed reproductions of San rock art.

Also on your left in Church Street, is the Hester Rupert Art Gallery (15), in a cruciform building of 1821, built as a school and mission church. Like the similar institution in Swellendam, it was known as ‘die oefeningshuis’ — the house of (religious) practice or service — to comply with a regulation that stated that, in the country districts, no church should be built within three days’ ride of an existing church of the same faith.

Cross Church Street and look along Parliament Street, where a number of the houses are national monuments, before returning to your starting point

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South African Travel Guide: ‘Gem of the Karoo’ in a spacious mountain setting continued

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