Page 79 - KBHA Bulletin 10

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Tombstones at Silvermine Farm graveyard

Silvermine Farm dates back to 1808 as a freehold farm and buildings were erected
thereafter upon it. In 1883 it came into the ownership of John Murray Kirsten who in

1901 sold part of it to B. N. P. van der Poll. Both Kirsten and van der Poll families

inter-married, and owned large tracts of land on either side of the Steenberg Mountains.
Contemporary Pollsmoor and Kirstenhof are named after them.

Near the farmhouse (now a local head-quarters and overnight stop within the Table

Mountain National Park) is a fenced graveyard, heavily overgrown and beneath a group
of Cypress trees, containing three graves. The headstones are in relatively good

condition: one is undamaged, another has lost part of a projecting corner, while the third

has been broken in half but re-erected. Clearly, the branches dropped by the
overhanging trees have caused this damage and threaten the future of the headstones.

The graves are those of John Murray Kirsten (4/11/1840 – 3/2/1903), his wife

Magdalena Jacoba Kirsten (5/8/1829 – 27/12/1902), and her daughter by a previous
marriage, Magdalena Jacoba van der Poll (24/7/1886 – 18/11/1898). (Fig. 2.19)

Tombstones at Abe Bailey’s Grave

Abe Bailey’s grave is approached from Boyes Drive via dressed-stone steps that land at

the centrepoint of a hemispherical terrace situated on the upper portion of his former

property “Rust en Vrede”. A magnificent panoramic view opens up over False Bay and
the Peninsula and Kogelberg Mountains. (Fig. 2.20).

Abe’s tombstone lies in the surface of the terrace and is inscribed:

Sir Abe Bailey Bart
KCMG
1864 – 1940