Forest Hall is an historic estate located in The Crags near Plettenberg Bay. It hosts a spectrum of high end functions including grand weddings and corporate events (click here for some recent pics). In the article below, first published in Restorica in 1977, Patricia Storrar delves into the history of this unique property. Thank you to the Heritage Association of South Africa and the University of Pretoria for giving us permission to publish.
It is impossible to write the story of Forest Hall, a spacious old house standing in the heart of forested land some 23 kilometres east of Plettenberg Bay, without sketching briefly the history of the man who built it more than a century ago. Because it was the character of this man and the background from which he came which determined emphatically the size and style of the house and the setting in which it was placed.
In June 1847 young William Henry Newdigate, third son of Francis Newdigate and his wife, Lady Barbara Maria Legge, daughter of the third Earl of Dartmouth, arrived to put down his roots in the green Piesang Valley, Plettenberg Bay. A scion of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Britain, he could trace his ancestry back on the paternal side through a long line of noble Newdigates - among whom titles abounded - to the 15th century. The Newdigate ancestral seat was - and still is today - Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, Warwickshire. William and two of his brothers were born at Astley Castle, the seat of...
