Below are edited excerpts from an article titled 'Stone Beehive Dwellings of the North-Western Cape'. The piece was written by James Walton and appeared in a 1961 edition of South African Panorama.
The road from Carnarvon to Williston in the north-western Cape winds across the semi-desert sheep country stretching up to the Karee Range. Dusty tracks through rocky outcrops of black basalt, weathered into gaunt, fantastic shapes and polished by the wind, lead to the scattered farmsteads. It is a hard, relentless country and one which promises little of interest; but in the homes of its early settlers it still retains one of the most fascinating architectural features in the whole of Southern Africa.
Schuinshoogte Corbelled House (South African Panorama)
In this stony, treeless, semi-desert country the first settlers built themselves giant stone beehive-shaped dwellings. And to look down for the first time on a farmstead such as Stuurmansfontein (see main image), with its glistening white beehives standing out sharply against the black basalt amphitheatre in which they nestle, is almost as remarkable as first seeing the famous beehive villages of Alberobello in Southern Italy or Gordes in the Maritime Alps.
The huts are usually circular in plan, having an internal diameter of up to 18 feet, although a few are rectangular. The walls rise vertically to...
