This house was designed by Charles Aburrow in 1897 for Thomas Cullinan (later Sir), master builder and diamond mining magnate. Cullinan was not prepared to fight against the Boers. He took his family to his wife's home in the Eastern Cape. There he joined the Wodehouse Yeomanry, a purely defensive group of local farmers, yet they nearly captured General Smuts at Moordenaars Poort.