At five o clock in the afternoon of Saturday 19 December 1925, a wisp of smoke was seen to rise lazily from the thatched roof near the kitchen of the Groot Constantia Manor House. Moments later the huge thatch roof caught fire creating an uncontrollable inferno. With no brandsolder to contain the flames, the blaze crashed through to the boarded ceilings of the rooms below and through that to the main floor. Other than bare blackened walls and gables, nothing of the historic wooden roof beams, ceilings, heavy wood lintels, wooden doors, window frames and built-in cupboards survived this great fire. Furthermore, a great deal of the internal wall plastering damaged by the extreme heat peeled off and continued doing so because of subsequent exposure to the elements.
As architect Franklin Kendall FRIBA, entrusted by the Public Works Department in 1926 to restore this Manor House states in his book, The Restoration of Groot Constantia, ‘A more complete burn out could scarcely be imagined’. At the time, the destruction of this, the most historical farm house in South Africa, caused profound dismay, but in retrospect it may have been a blessing in disguise. The restoration of this Manor House, ably and sensitively overseen by Kendall, bar one possible criticism, offered opportunity to examine the layout of the original building and identify the extensive alterations and additions of the preceding centuries.
Fortunately, all the outbuildings escaped this fire and are therefore either part of the original estate, or date from...
