Page 69 - Bulletin 12 2008

66

THE ORIGINS AND FORMS OF SELECTED CAPE PENINSULA VILLAGES
(Excerpts from the book Old Towns and Villages of the Cape)

Hans Fransen

Preface

The old Cape Province of South Africa is widely renowned for the variety and beauty of
its scenery. Over the last three centuries and a half it has also become the home of styles

of traditional domestic architecture – and in particular the style known as ‘Cape Dutch’
– as distinctive and appealing as any in the Old World. Similarly, Cape Town, its focal

point, is stunningly situated, and so are many of the country towns that sprang up over

time to the east and north of the province.

Most of its towns were designed by hasty land-surveyors. They cut up available pieces

of farmland into rectangles for quick sale to people wanting to live, retire, do business
or grow produce near a newly founded church or administrative or commercial centre.

Many of our towns and villages were charming places a century or less ago. In the way
the villagers and village builders managed to ‘furnish’ and humanize even the more

unimaginative town layouts handed them by the land-surveyors, they produced
genuinely sympathetic and harmonious built environments. Many of these towns have

retained some of that charm, even if the visitor has to make a short detour through some

of the back streets to find it.

The Concept ‘Cultural Landscape’

In the description of man’s environment a much-used concept nowadays is that of the
‘cultural landscape’. It refers to the imprint imposed on the natural landscape by human

habitation and cultivation. The Cape was inhabited many tens of thousands of years

before Western settlement. But because of the mostly nomadic lifestyle of its earlier
inhabitants, the lasting visible impact of humans on this land goes back little more than