Springfontein, Free State - Clouds of dust blurred the horizon and the sun scorched the already drought-ravaged land, but respite was near.
Someone had suggested a visit to Prior Grange Guest Farm just outside Springfontein in the southern Free State, mentioning that the farm had been in the family for five generations and its current owner was a fundi on history. It also makes an ideal overnight stop for holidaymakers using the N1, which links the interior with several Cape coastal resorts.
Prior Grange proved to be a veritable oasis, with dozens of trees and well-watered lawns. A towering ghost eucalyptus tree (so named because of its white bark) held sway over the garden. It is said to be one of the most glorious bluegums in the country, and its “presence” is unmistakable.
Aptly-named Gumtree Cottage crouches at its feet. Double-storey Prior Grange Cottage, where I stayed, dates back to 1895 and was once a small school and then a storeroom. With thick stone walls, small pane windows, Oregon pine woodwork, terracotta tiles, and scatter carpets, it was cool and tranquil. Fresh flowers nodded in the vases. Winter can be icy, so electric blankets and wall heaters are available. Outside a ladder leads to a loft, which has been turned into a bar and small lounge. Between 6 and 7pm guests gather there for sundowners. An outside deck is the perfect spot to watch the sunset.
Garden Cottage, located under a large pepper tree, was once used as a sitting area for those waiting to play tennis. Cricket is still popular and the Springfontein team often plays matches against teams from neighbouring towns on the farm’s oval. Willow Cottage caters for those wanting to prepare their own meals.
Stable Cottage, between paddocks and also surrounded by trees, was once used to stable merino sheep and lambs before shows and sales. When this stopped about 40 years ago, the building was turned into a guest cottage.
Prior Grange is still a merino sheep farm; the first merinos having been introduced into the country in 1789. After strolling around the grounds and a walk along a dam wall, where sounds in the reed-beds indicated the birds were content, it was time for sundowners in the loft.
History had lured me to the farm, and I wasn’t disappointed. Blackie de Swardt and his wife Sheryl were waiting behind the bar to take me back in time. In 1825, Joshua Prior arrived from England, settled in the Eastern Cape, and in 1855 moved to the southern Free State. His son, also Joshua Prior, was a young man who knew who to rub shoulders with. He befriended Faro Kok, brother of the leader of the Griquas, Adam Kok.
In 1894, Kok gave the younger Prior permission to buy the farms Ploegfontein, Schraalfontein and Jantjiesfontein. Naming his new acquisition Prior Grange after his father, he built a house (still occupied by his descendants to this day) and a school (now Prior Grange Cottage).
Time passed, and the property fell into the hands of Prior’s sister, Lucy. The school closed and the building became a storeroom where charitable Lucy often housed tramps in exchange for doing small jobs on the farm.
She sold the farm to Louis Wilmot, the grandson of one of her sisters. Wilmot redeveloped the farm and started a merino stud. His daughter, Sheryl, and her husband, Blackie, then took over, made some changes, and in 1995 opened it as a guest farm with their son, Stephen.
The area is redolent of tales from the Anglo-Boer War, and De Swardt recounts how in 1899 a Boer commando moved south from Springfontein. Splitting into two, one faction went to guard the bridge over the Orange River at Norval’s Pont. The other went to Bethulie.
The intention was to stop the British advance into the interior of the Orange Free State Boer republic, along the railway lines. Two British scouts, hearing the railway line to Springfontein was intact and unprotected, stole a hand trolley and travelled along the 48km line to scout the area. To their shock, they ran into the Boers sleeping in Springfontein. The two managed to escape. Realising the British were about to mount an attack, the Boers evacuated Springfontein, which the British seized on March 17, 1900, without a shot being fired.
De Swardt also told how Emily Hobhouse stayed in a house in Springfontein during her visits to the local concentration camps, prior to making her damning reports on their condition.
In the Springfontein cemetery the bodies of 300 British soldiers were buried alongside those of the bodies of 700 Boer women and children. The body of one British lieutenant is interred metres away from that of Mattheus Hendrik Steyn, brother of the Orange Free State president Martinus Theunis Steyn, who died here en route to a PoW camp in Cape Town.
Springfontein also served as a disinfectant spot. Around 1900, male passengers travelling from the Cape into the Orange Free State had to get off the train here for their clothes to be disinfected against plague. Women were not subjected to this indignity.
De Swardt has written a book, 963 days at the junction: a document of the history of Springfontein during the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902.
Prior Grange is wheelchair-friendly, and all meals – with candles and veld flowers on the table – are served in the cottage where guests are staying. I tucked into homemade mutton pie, spinach quiche, fluffy potatoes, butternut, peas and carrot with gusto, finishing with an apple and cranberry tartlet with cream. A full farm breakfast was equally tasty.
A 5am walk in the veld produced skittish springbok, horses, a heron, and a clapper lark. The grass was tawny through lack of rain, the flat veld stretched to the distant horizon where koppies reared their heads.
Times like this remind me why I love South Africa so deeply.
l Call 083 310 3284; e-mail priorgrange@lantic.net, see priorgrange.co.za
Saturday Star