Bernard Vrey interior at Rickety Bridge

Still looking at the interior of the old house at Rickety Bridge, the yellow wood panels in the side doors leading to the lounge and the downstairs accommodation are of a design used by Bernard Vrey and, according to Len, could date from before Vrey’s death in 1794 which would date the building much earlier than 1830. The fluting in the cupboard belongs to a period between 1790 and 1820 which confirmed, in Len’s mind, the earlier date of the building. There are of course several explanations for the doors and cupboard; they could simply have been copied; they could have been bought by the Peplers, or Paulina’s father, Paul de Villiers, both of whom were wealthy by the standards of the time; they could have been bought and installed by the Dirkse van Schalkwyk; they could have come from a much older building on the site which escaped the digging around of the University of Cape Town specialists by being directly under the present house.

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