Weltevreden Farm in Roodepoort, one of the city's oldest dwellings, will put on a new jacket this year and become part of a new office complex.
The original farmhouse, dating back to 1861, was a three-roomed structure with 40cm thick walls of sun-dried mud bricks, a yellowwood ceiling and a thatch roof and attic. In the 1870s additions were made – a kitchen and bedrooms were added at the back. And in the late 1930s further changes to the house were made - a Cape Dutch gable was added to the façade and waterborne sewerage was brought to the house.
And now the house is to be restored and converted into office space, sandwiched between two two-storeyed buildings. The original wagon and coach house will be converted into a set of offices.
This development is being undertaken by Nico Louw, the managing director of Renico Construction, and a major developer in the area. It will be called Gables Office Estate, a reference to the farmhouse's gables.
The 7 200sq m property in Tennis Road, Weltevreden Park, contains three huge palms, a large oak tree and several jacaranda trees – evidence of its vintage. A well-established garden, formed in the shape of the attractive gables, will largely remain in the new development. Several outbuildings, some recent additions, will be demolished.
A similar development has taken place, at Villa Arcadia in Parktown, formerly the home of Randlord Lionel Phillips and his wife, Florence. That property was bought by Hollard Insurance in 2003. The house has been restored by the company and it now shares the site with Hollard's 12 000sq m office development.
The original farm was allocated to three men in 1861: two cousins, RG Badenhorst and HJJ Badenhorst, and Cornelis Johannes Smit, according to heritage consultant Janet du Plooy, who undertook the heritage impact assessment for the property.
The three men were given the land as "burgerrecht" compensation, in recognition of fighting for the government in various tribal wars that were ongoing at the time. Smit was given a wagon, oxen and £900 in addition to land.
He was born in 1829 and worked as a wagon maker and metalsmith in the Wagenmakers' Valley in the Cape. In 1872 Smit bought HJJ Badenhorst's portion, paying for it with a team of oxen and £900, according to his great, great grandson, Louis Kruger, who was born in the house in 1934. Smit took over the three-roomed farmhouse and added more rooms, clearly distinguishable from the front rooms by their flat roof.
He was a skilled craftsman. "The yellowwood shutters before the windows, as well as the hinges, were made by him. He also installed two small wall units in the voorkamer (lounge) with yellowwood doors," Du Plooy explains. The shutters and hinges have stood the test of time: they are still functional more than 135 years later.
There are still visible chiselling marks on the yellowwood ceiling. Kruger says his father, Johannes Ludovicus Kruger, made the attractive carved pelmets, the yellowwood front door, with brass handle and door knocker and glass panels.
In 1879 a tornado destroyed the thatch roof and Smit replaced it with a corrugated iron roof, which is still in place. The iron sheeting came from England – it is stamped with "Wolverhampton Corrugated Iron, Emu Brand".
A year later, in 1880, a tragedy hit Smit and his family. The farmhouse was struck by lightning, damaging its northeastern corner. And worse, Smit's two daughters died in the resulting fire. Black marks on the timber beams in the attic attest to the blaze. Then, as a precaution, Smit erected a tall lightning conductor, which is still in place on the roof.
One of the rooms on the stoep was converted into a mortuary, over time becoming the district's official mortuary. A family cemetery, several blocks from the house, still exists - today surrounded by townhouse complexes - but many of the stones are too worn to read.
Smit died in 1891 and his son, also Cornelis Johannes, inherited 500 acres of land, which later became the nearby suburb of Fairland. His daughter, Anna, sold her inheritance to John Dale Lace, a Randlord and owner of one of Johannesburg's famous mansions, Northwards in Parktown.
Dale Lace already owned Hy Many House, believed to be a year older than the Weltevreden farmhouse, dating back to 1860.
The farmhouse escaped destruction during the South African War of 1899 to 1902, Du Plooy suggests, because Smit junior sided with the British. Kruger's version is that his grandfather was "very rich", speculating with cattle and selling to the British, with whom he was friendly.
Smit's second daughter, Martha, inherited the part of the farm with the farmhouse. She married Theunis Erasmus in 1902 and died in the flu epidemic of 1918, leaving six children. The farm was parcelled out to the children in 1934, and Martha junior inherited the farmhouse. She married Johannes Ludovicus Kruger.
He changed the façade of the house by introducing the Cape Dutch gable, echoed in the design of the garden. Two rooms were converted into bathrooms, with waterborne sewerage – one on the stoep and one in the middle of the house. Kruger says he also replaced a wooden staircase to the attic with a brick and plaster staircase, and built the fireplace in the front room, which was possibly an open hearth previously. Kruger says his father also built several of the outbuildings.
Kruger describes his childhood growing up in the house as "very happy". He went to the nearby Fairland primary school. At the age of 20 he left home and moved to Durban, where he met and married his wife, Hester Susan Groenewald.
From the 1970s the Erasmus children began selling their inheritance, and present-day suburbs sprang up: Allen's Nek, Randpark Ridge, Constantia Kloof, Weltevreden Park, Radiokop and sections of Panorama, Wilgeheuwel and Strubens Valley.
In 1979 Kruger died and his son Louis inherited the farmhouse. By now very little land belonging to the house remained. Louis moved back to the farmhouse with his wife and two children. She died in the house in 1997 and he continued to live in the house on his own until 2003.
He lived briefly in a cottage on the property, which he says burnt down. Du Plooy mentions a pile of bricks near the house, which she can't identify and it is possible they are the remains of the cottage.
In 1996 the property was rezoned from residential to business use and in 1997 Kruger extended the wagon and coach house. Used by his father as a workshop, he turned it into a pub which his son ran for four years. He rented it out but had a dispute with the lessee over unpaid rentals, and around 2003 he sold it to a lawyer. For several years the house was rented to a cleaning company.
In 2005 the lawyer sold the property for R5,5m to Louw, who intends building his office park at a cost of R25m. The Weltevreden Farm was in the same family for 131 years. - Lucille Davie