We had to say farewell to Dr Hans Fransen on Friday morning
at his celebration of life ceremony held in Pinelands. Hans, with his two PhD’s
was a meticulous researcher and an authority on art history and architecture.
His internationally renowned work earned him a knighthood from the Netherlands.
I was fortunate to have worked with Hans on several occasions over the past 30
years.
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| Well travelled books |
First, as the organiser of talks and outings for the Vernacular
Architecture Society of South Africa and later as chairman of the Society. Hans
was an inspiration. He was always keen to give a talk to the Society. Sometimes,
the briefing for the talk and the final talk as presented would differ, because
Hans always had new perspectives on vernacular architecture which he would be
keen to share, and we, equally keen to hear.
Something I will always remember of Hans, was his willingness to share his knowledge. His impressive legacy of publications on vernacular architecture bears testimony to his generosity of knowledge sharing.
I remember meeting Hans outside my cottage in Woodstock
where he was cycling through the suburb. He was recording buildings for his
book, “A Guide to Old Buildings of the Cape”, which was a total revision of his
earlier work, “The Old Buildings of the Cape”. The updated work was published
by Jonathan Ball in 2004. He was recording the terrace in which we live, to be
included in the publication.
Seeing Hans cycling through the city was a familiar sight. When encountered, he could still find time for a friendly chat.
There are few words to describe the significance of his published works on the cultural and built heritage of South Africa. We refer to the book “The Old Houses of the Cape”, co-authored with Dr Mary Cook and published by Balkema in 1965, as the bible of Cape vernacular architectural inventory in South Africa.
This book was my constant guide when planning outings for
the Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa. I have a well-worn traveling
copy that was always in the bakkie when we used to go on road-trips exploring
the Western Cape platteland and discovering old buildings.
“The Old Houses of the Cape” was our guide to the
architecture of that landscape.
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| Map from "Beyond the City Lights" - Lawrence Green (1957) |
Another travelling companion, was a publication of the
well-known raconteur and journalist, Lawrence Green. Lawrence Green, though a
generation earlier than Hans, also had a passion for the history of the Cape,
but his light-hearted approach, was to research or investigate ‘the stories’ of
the old Cape. His particular interest was in the people. These are the people
who gave life to the vernacular buildings of our interest, when some were still
relatively new. One of Lawrence Green’s books would be the companion book through
which we would discover some journalistic social history of the landscape. I
feel that the social and architectural history of a landscape are integral to
each other. To more accurately understand the buildings one needs to understand
the people who built and lived in them.
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| Map from the "Old Houses of the Cape" - Hans Fransen/Dr Mary Cook (1965) |
Lawrence Green captured so many facets of South African life
in his books. Books like “Karoo” (1955), and “Beyond the City Lights” (1957),
and others published by Howard Timmins, simply coloured the history of the landscapes
we explored.
To illustrate the point, I use the town of Robertson. In the
“The Old Houses of the Cape” by Hans Fransen and Dr Mary Cook, with its many
illustrations and maps, the information of the town will be recorded as follows
on page 209.
“Robertson was founded
in 1853, although the farm ‘Het Rode Zand aan de Hoopsrivier’ was bought as a
site from J. (Hans) van Zyl the year before. It was called after Dr. William
Robertson, at that time predikant of Swellendam, who till that time had visited
the place every three months. This is another example of a dorp that owes its
beginning not to the need of local government, but to the need of a church –
the cornerstone of which was laid in 1853.
The town is laid out
in rectangular building blocks on a level stretch of ground between Willem Nels
River and the Hoops River. The streets running from NW to SE in particular are
very regularly spaced – except for the church block, which intercepts Market
Street – which gives a certain monotony to this fairly large town. Dotted over
almost the entire area are gabled houses dated between 1853 and 1865, fourteen
in all, and several older houses, mostly with flat roofs and slightly later in
date. The gabled houses nearly all have rectangular ground-plans, two rooms
deep, and correspondingly high gables; some of these have pronounced wings –
without scrolls – resting on the outer pilasters. Unfortunately no important
clusters of old houses can be found.”
This information with the beautiful maps drawn by Hans, would
give us, on a reconnaissance excursion, a clear idea of what we will find in
the town when looking at the architecture. On our way to a town I would read
from Lawrence Green while Keith was driving. The stories gave the town a life
and context to the buildings.
In “Beyond the City Lights”, Lawrence Green (1957),
Robertson is introduced as follows on pages 221 to 223.
“Robertson came into
being two or three years after Montagu, but in the conventional manner. The
church bought Mr. Hans van Zyl’s farm, which bore the impressive name of “Het
Roode Zand aan de Hoops Rivier in het Land van Waaferen”. That was much too
long, so they called the new village Robertson after Dr. William Robertson,
minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at Swellendam.
Swellendam farmers
were already grazing their cattle in the area, just as they did at Montagu.
When it was discovered that the soil was suitable for vines, the village was
born.
The farm “Het Roode
Zand” cost £4200, and the auctioneer who sold the plots was the redoubtable Mr.
Joseph Barry of Swellendam. He and his nephews owned ships, shops and farms;
especially shops. At one time he issued his own paper money. “As jy lekker wil lewe,
koop by Barry and Newe,” was the slogan of a century ago, as good as many a
modern effort. Barry followed the church into every new village and opened the
first shop. He was the business pioneer of Robertson, and his descendants are
still there four generations later.
Robertson soon became
a wagon-building village. It was Fouché and his daughter (an unusual
combination in this trade) who made President Kruger’s coach, now in the
Pretoria museum. During the boom years it was said that half the village was
making wagons while the other half was away on togry, selling the wagons in the
republics. Sometimes a cavalcade of twenty wagons would leave Robertson and
travel in company. These wagons would be loaded with wine and brandy, almonds
and raisins, vinegar, moskonfyt and dried fruit. Clever carpenters in the village,
Preiss and Koos van Zyl and others, also made stinkwood furniture of the sort
that collectors are glad to find nowadays.
They believed in
bilingualism at Robertson as far back as 1854. The children were attending a
school at which Nederlands was the only medium, and naturally they spoke
Afrikaans at home. So the parents wrote to Glasgow for a teacher, and the
appeal was answered by Alexander Clarke. His salary was seventy pounds a year.
This strict but popular man learnt Dutch quickly, used his cane freely and
gained a great reputation as a teacher. He had been in the village for two
years when he swallowed his dental plate at a meal. Heroic methods were used in
the effort to recover it. They tried to hook it out with wire, and when that
failed they pushed it father down his throat with his own cane. Meanwhile a
volunteer had galloped to Worcester for the doctor. When the doctor arrived
fifteen hours later Clarke was dead.
This new village
without a doctor lived in great fear of measles. When outbreaks were reported
in other villages, Robertson posted sentries to keep strangers out. One
week-end in September 1860, however, a girl named Sophie Erasmus came in from
one of the farms in the district with her father to attend church. She was not
feeling well, but she was in love. Her young man took her to church next day,
and before her illness had been diagnosed, Sophie had infected about seventy
people with measles.
It was the custom in
those days to treat measles with a revolting concoction which included
kraalmis. The local midwife was a great believer in this appalling drink of
farmyard manure. She mixed it carefully herself and went from house to house
administering the potion of death. For this so-called cure for measles
contained of germs of typhoid fever. In this first typhoid epidemic, one hundred
white people were affected and sixty died. The very last victim was the
minister, the Rev. C. H. de Smidt, who had weakened his resistance by working
himself almost to death attending the others. Among coloured people the death
rate was frightening.
It was a drought year,
and the typhoid epidemic caused so much additional distress that the government
had to open a soup kitchen. Other villages sent wagonloads of food. Typhoid
returned almost every summer, however, and Robertson gained the ominous nickname
of “Koorsdorp” A serious outbreak occurred in the summer of 1896-97, due once
more to polluted water. Soon afterwards
the situation was saved by the piping of water from the Langeberg to the
village. During the water famines, water was so precious that every householder
took his pump-handle to bed with him for fear of thieves.”
I wonder if Hans and Lawrence ever crossed paths. I will
never know. But here were two men recording different histories of the same
places and in that giving a more complete picture of the cultural landscape.
I never met Lawrence Green, the journalist, but I am glad I
was fortunate to have met Dr Hans Fransen. A generous man in knowledge and
spirit. One seldom realises the contribution a person makes to one’s life until
you reflect upon it when that person is no longer there.
I am sorry that Dr Hans Fransen never visited Towerwater to see how his work inspired us to rescue and restore the property,
but at least his written legacy graces the bookshelves of our library. With his books as informative travel companions we will remember him as we explore the countryside looking at Cape vernacular architecture. Something I think he would have liked.
