The farm with a fine family tree
Andrew Unsworth visits a former farmhouse, now a museum, that’s full of fascinating history
THE farm Kaalfontein near Bronkhorstspruit has an old farmhouse on it that, for once, deserves the term “hidden gem”. It dates back to 1880 and is preserved very much as it was in the early 20th century, complete with its contents.
The farm last belonged to Miertjie le Roux (nee Prinsloo) and three generations of her Prinsloo ancestors. It now forms part of the Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum, run by Ditsong Museums.
Willem Prinsloo (1820-1898), who gloried in the wonderful nickname Willem Wragtig, was an early settler in the Transvaal, hunting and trading in skins and horns. As a 15-year-old in 1836, he left the Eastern Cape with his parents on the trek of Gerrit Maritz into Natal. By 1848 he was living near Pretoria.
He bought the farm Modderfontein, close to the Witwatersrand, and when gold was discovered sold it for a fortune: that became the Modderfontein Gold Mining Company. He then bought the farm Elandsfontein outside of Pretoria, only to sell it for £52 000 when diamonds were discovered: that bit became the Premier Diamond Mine at Cullinan.
In 1889, he bought the farm Kaalfontein, about 40km east of Pretoria, for £6 000 but it seems he never lived there. From 1899, his son Lang Willem (1849-1926) did, along with his Cornelia and their three children including Klein Lang Willem (1881 - 1971).
Lang Willem, his two sons and other men in his family fought in the Anglo-Boer War as Bittereinders, while Cornelia and others were captured and sent to the concentration camp in Howick. They all survived the war, but the old farmhouse on Kaalfontein, which pre-dated the Prinsloos, had been burnt by the British, the thatch and woodwork destroyed. It was restored with a corrugatediron roof.
During the time the Prinsloos lived on the farm there were five houses on it but the 1880s house was the oldest. Klein Lang Willem’s granddaughter, Maria Elizabeth or Miertjie (1908-1999), lived on in the house with her grandmother Cornelia until the latter’s death in 1938. Miertjie and her husband Meiring le Roux only moved out in 1976, staying on in another 1927 house on the farm.
When Miertjie’s brother died in 1976 she donated 16ha of the farm, including the 1880 house and outbuildings, to the National Cultural History and Open-air Museum, which bought more of the farm and the 1913 and 1927 homesteads on it a few years later. The museum was opened in 1980. As ever with large families, the genealogy can be confusing but you don’t need it to enjoy the house. It is small and one wonders how a family with so many lang men coped. But they are still there in portraits and group pictures of weddings on the walls. Most of the furniture dates from the 1920s and ’30s: there is a wood-burning stove and gauze-door cupboards for storing groceries, tables and a riempies bank. There is also an organ that survived the war because it was not in the house at the time, plus beds and washstands — a bathroom was added in ’45.
There is no guide and no notes but the rooms speak for themselves. The back rooms are under an afdak, indicating that they were added later. With small rooms, the front stoep or verandah must have been a useful place to sit. Some are not open, such as the jonkmanskamer (son’s bedroom) and the spare room, which often housed passing peddlers or sheep-shearers.
The garden has traces of old orchard, hedges, hydrangeas and now majestic oak trees. It’s very peaceful, with turkeys gobbling around the yard and very little else.
The Agricultural Museum on the farm, where you pay the R30 admission, has a huge collection of old farm machinery and tractors, as well as the largest collection of 19th-century wagons, carts, traps, spiders, carriages and landaus in the country. They are all in good condition and well labelled. See willemprinsloomuseum.co.za