When researching the history of the property we were lucky
enough to befriend previous inhabitants and owners of the property that could
give us an oral history that we would not have found elsewhere.
The sister of the last owner, who was then already in her
90’s, told us how the cottage was used as accommodation with the stables for
the animals next door.
From aerial photographs taken in the early 1940’s, we could
see that the cottage was originally a much longer building and we discovered parts
of the floor plan under the two bottom beds in the vegetable garden. We could
not reconstruct the full length of the building as it would now extend into a sold
off section of the property.
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| Thatching |
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| Keith plastering the hearth. |
We also discovered the remnants of a poespas (stones that
were laid higgledy piggeldy) floor of a kraal in front of the cottage.
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| Freshly plastered |
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| Freshly whitewashed |
Most of the cottage had to be rebuilt because of weather
damage. We found a brick maker in the foothills of the mountain behind
Robertson that could still make unbaked sundried bricks. In this way we could
restore the buildings with authentic materials where required. All the
plasterwork was done with a mix of 2.1.8 that is 2 parts Lime, 1 part Cement
and 8 parts Sand. This is the correct mixture to repair historical plaster on
old buildings. Modern cement based plaster mixes tends to destroy the historical
brickwork because it does not allow the clay unbaked bricks to breathe.
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| Restored front |
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| Restored back |
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| Back of cottage seen from the vegetable garden. |
We kept as much of the original walls as possible and decided
to restore the living section of the building as a cottage.
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| First view of the cottage in 1991 |
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The same view today
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We lived and entertained in the cottage for more than three happy years while we worked on the main house and it lives really very well. Does one actually need more?!
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