The Announcer recently reported on some exciting developments at the Bathurst Agricultural Museum:

There is a large, shiny new shed – or, more accurately, a brand new structure with a shiny new roof but no walls as yet – just below the main museum building, on the Nolukanye side, which will eventually house all the old and antique farming equipment and implements that have been standing around all over the museum grounds for years, because there’s been nowhere else to store them.

Closer to the road (right next to the entrance off the R67 to Grahamstown) you will have noticed the corrugated iron front and back walls of what is going to become a blacksmiths’ forge, long in the planning.  The front wall has beautiful, outward curving old-fashioned stoep- roof beams, which is a lovely feature of this partially completed structure.  These walls, as well as the two end walls, which have not yet been erected, come from an old shed that Alan Pike – curator and devoted champion of the museum – managed to procure from a nearby farm.

The idea is to set up a traditional iron-monger’s smithy, as a living exhibit that will be run as a working forge.

Click here to read the full article

The museum is open from Monday to Saturday 9am to 4pm and on Sunday 3 – 4pm or by appointment.  The curator can be reached on 083 627 4351. – ShirleyMarais