The wonderful story below appeared in the Nelspruit Post on 21 February 2018. Thank you to the team from Mpumalanga Heritage and The Lowvelder for giving us permission to publish.
Last week a lot was said and much was speculated about the large sycamore fig in front of the old Land Bank building in Bester Street in the old town centre. The tree stands well preserved and cared for in an enclosure of its own, and not without reason. This was to protect what is without a doubt the tree with the most historic significance in old Nelspruit - and to my mind in the whole of Mbombela. This was after some readers contacted us to remind us of a discovery once made under the shady leaves of that tree, which sent us to the archives of Lowveld Media, publishers of Nelspruit Post.
Not only was this indigenous tree rooted here long before the town of Nelspruit ever existed - before it was surveyed and laid out parallel with the old Eastern railway line, or Oosterspoor, between Pretoria and Lourenco Marques in the 1890s. For many years its generous shade was also home to the first smithy ever to open a business in the Lowveld.
When the Land Bank was built in the early 1950s, this modern and cleverly designed two-storey building, with window screens constructed at an angle measured to screen off the harsh Lowveld afternoon sun, was set a few metres deeper from the sidewalk than its neighbouring structures...
