Rebuilding Cape Dutch

For the renovation of the manor house Robin Singer  used Len Raymond. Len used plans drawn by Rowan Pape the architect. When Pape was contacted he said that his file on Rickety Bridge had been lost in an office move but Len brought a set of the plans to the meeting. Len’s wife had been about to destroy the plans after an office clean up when the phone call to arrange a meeting came through; one of the many ESP incidents that have graced the history of the property.

Len Raymond was chose because he had researched the old Cape houses extensively in tracing the history of the work of one of the old carpenters Bernard Vrey and his first comment was that the manor house had, at some stage, been extended on both sides by enough to accommodate an extra window.

The gable was reduced by Len to something like its original proportions, reflecting the Constantia design rather than the Flemish influence of the previous gable. This was done to allow the valley in the thatched roof to drain properly and not be blocked by the gable.

The front door that was then in place was not the original as the centre panel would have been a single plank rather than the planks joined by the butterfly insert in place now.

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