Toposcope brings frontier history to life
Bathurst landmark honours both settler families, Xhosa leaders
“But why are the distances given in miles, not kilometres?” The question was posed by someone of an age where miles could be nothing but a term sometimes heard in American movies, so I replied: “We were still using miles in SA when this toposcope was built, and of course the 1820 settlers talked in miles.”
We were looking at the plaques set in the crescentshaped wall at the Toposcope, which I was showing to visitors on behalf of Historic Bathurst.
The plaques face in the directions of the places where the different settler parties were placed by the British authorities, and give the distances to them.
A more awkward question comes regularly from settler descendants visiting the landmark. They hope to see their family names somewhere on the plaques, but often don’t.
The reason, we have to explain, is that only the name of the leader of each party is given on each plaque, not every settler family. From there it becomes an exercise in name recognition, as surnames on the plaques like Mills, Wilmot, Purdon, Gurney, Cock and so forth are still found
all over the Eastern Cape and SA.
Most commonly recognised, we find, is the widespread name Pringle. Their plaque shows that the party led by Thomas Pringle (still honoured as one of the fathers of the independent press in SA), settled 79 miles (120 km) away at what they named Eildon after a place in their native Scotland. Some visitors note that there are still Pringles on our
local Eildon, near present-day Bedford, as is the case with a number of other farms where the original settler families still.
The Toposcope plaques also give the places of origin of the various settler parties, stretching from London as far as Ireland, and the names of the ships that carried them. Visitors enjoy some of the more exotic names of these vessels, ranging from
Amphitryon to Zoroaster. They also admire the 360-degree panoramic views from the Toposcope’s site at the summit of Bathurst (although the word toposcope has nothing to do with ‘top’, but means literally ‘place-look’). Acting Cape governor Rufane Donkin and army surveyor Charles Michel camped here in 1820 so that they could use the vantage point to decide which areas to allocate to each party as another plaque tells us.
Further plaques, around the Toposcope’s centrepiece cairn, recall Frontier Country historian Ted Morse-Jones, on whose research all the information given here is based, and local dignitary Ian MacKenzie, who unveiled the Toposcope in 1968.
Both are accorded the old title Esq (Esquire), an archaic honorific that serves to enhance the historical atmosphere.
A set of mounds, inspired by the traditional isivivana/e in
Xhosa and other cultures, alongside the wall honour some of the most famous Xhosa amakhosi in the area and indicate where the territory of each was. They include Ngqika, Gcaleka, Sandile, Hintsa and our own Ndlambe. This addition has proved popular, making the Toposcope a more inclusive monument to the Frontier’s turbulent history.
This was part of a revamp of the Toposcope that Historical Bathurst has carried out ever the last few years. It also included replacing the old bronze plaques, many of which had been badly vandalised or stolen, with durable granite ones.
Bathurst’sToposcope does more than provide visitors with information on the history of the area (and offer them some great views); it enables them to breathe the almost tangible historical atmosphere. It hosts the popular Piper at the Toposcope event on or near the winter solstice each year.