Lutheran Mission

Having explored the old mine Jimmy took me back down to the village for tea with Linda, who was by way of being the village historian. having been raised in a village, I naturally began to enquire about the people and the history and found another fascination tale. The village of Pniel was set up by three farmers around 1830, when the british Empire was outlawing slavery. The farm labourers were, at that time, all slaves and the farmers began to worry that the slaves, once free, would desert the farms and leave them without labour. Three farmers got together and set aside a piece of ground on which their slaves could build houses with the idea that this would make the slaves more inclined to stay and work on the farms as day labourers. The village was taken over by the Lutherans as a mission station, prospered. The residents built their own houses and their own reservoir and survived apartheid by more or less ignoring it, so, if you pay Pniel a visit, don't expect a shanty town.
Blogs are not the place for detailed history and the history of the old mine, for example, is in the sullatoberdalton.com website. The history of the silver mine itself being in     http://sullatoberdalton.com/?page_id=811&preview=true

Silver Mine

The old mine tunnels into the mountain at Pniel was into solid rock and two hundred and fifty years was aa solid as the day it had been working. Lady Anne Barnard had recorded that the mine never actually produced any silver but when the shareholders, who included the then Dutch East India governor of the Cape began to get annoyed, the operator, a chap called Muller, melted down a few Rix dollars and presented that as the production to keep them quiet.
Muller's assertion that there was silver in the Simonsberg was greeted with excitement as the Dutch East India Company was finding the gold and silver it owned growing scarce and the suppliers in the Dutch East Indies were not prepared to accept any alternative in the form of promissory notes or commodities.
 Jimmy, my guide, asked if it looked possible for there to have been silver and I told him there were many signs of quartz and that could mean there was precious metal in the area.
The old shaft was barricaded off but I could still see down it and there was a wooden ladder of uncertain age hanging there, which Jimmy said I could climb down to the lower level. I had only a hand torch and having tried tricks like that with a proper mining lamp and new chain ladders  and found they didn't reach far enough and I had to climb all the way back up, I declined.
The pictures show the tunnel, one of the crannies where the workers had placed a candle, the shaft and a bit of a dyke that didn't even look worth sampling.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

The Face of God

The Silver Mine I was looking for turned out to be above a village called Pniel, an old village set up by freed slaves in the early 1830's; Pniel translates to 'The Face of God'. I was lucky enough to find a lady called Linda who agreed to arrange for a guide to take me to the old mine.The old plan showed two level tunnels and a vertical shaft but from the village there was nothing to be seen, largely because the mine was in the Simonsberg that seems to hang over the village. My guide turned out to be Jimmy, who had worked in Falkirk and Canada and knew the site well. We climbed up the steep side of the mountain through a wonderful selection of Cape Fine Bos to the entrance to what seemed to be the main access level, where I could look out over the Dwars River Valley. Dwars is the Afrikaans for dry but this was winter and there was snow in the top of the far hills. The view made it a fine picnic spot used often by the villagers from Pniel.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Lady Ann Barnard

While I was involved in the wine farms around Franschhoek and Stellenbosch I had been trying to find soe information about the silver mine mentioned by Lady Ann Barnard in her memoirs. Lady Ann was the wife of the first secretary to the British Consul to the Cape Colony and made a tour of the area, which is a compulsory reading for anyone interested in the area and its history. She mentioned a silver mine but not its precise location and it was only when looking through a history of Stellenbosch that I found a plan of the old mine and got sucked into a whirlpool of history.  I had thought the nature reserve at Silvermine had something to do with it but, no, this was something else - the first of the many mining scams to be generated in South Africa.
As the picture shows, we are going into the dark on a mountainside through a tunnel dug in 1740 five years before Bonny Prince Charlie landed in Scotland.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Picnics at Delta Solms

At the end of the woodland at Solms Delta winery and museum, the Berg River runs over its brown stones in dappled sunshine creating an ideal picnic area. In the glade between the river and the dam. When I visited, Delta can cope with supplying picnics for up to ten parties in the summer months, an ideal spot to relax and unwind with friends and family. 

www.solms-delta.co.za

Lady Astor and the Delta cooperative

I was happy with what I had learned about Delta and the museum, the wines and the Solms family and was already drafting the article in my mind, when Mark explained his plans for the farm. It turned out he had partners, none other than the Astor family, one of whom had been the first female member of parliament in Westminster and had told Winston Churchill that he was drunk and, if she were his wife, she would poison his tea. Mark then explained that between the two families, they were forming a cooperative with the Wijn de Caab Trust which representing Delta’s workers and their families. From all this you'll understand the fascination of freelance journalism and writing in general.

www.solms-delta.co.za

Delta's royal connection

The white wine Amalie is named after Princess Amalie zu Solms-Braunfels, who’s grandson became William III of England two years before Delta had its first European resident in 1691.

While William had no children, the English royal family have German ancestry and, no matter how distant today, the Solms have many family ties with them. Their royal connections proved valuable when Friedrich Hermann, 3^rd Prince of Solms-Baruth was convicted of involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler. At the time, Hitler was negotiating with the king of Sweden and the Prince's life was spared due to the intervention of the Swedish ambassador, who informed the Nazi’s that the execution of the brother-in-law of the Swedish king’s queen would have unpredictable consequences for ongoing negotiations.

It was the unpredictability of what I would find that fascinated me as a freelance journalist in Cape Town.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Talking of wine

I told you there was something special ab out the way the Delta winery was organised and, like everything there, Hiervandaan red wine has a story. Marq, a descendent of the de Villiers, who were earlier owners of Delta (Paulina of Rickety Bridge being one of that ilk), came from Canada to research his family history. Talking to a worker on a nearby farm, Marc mentioned that his family had farmed the area for three hundred years. The labourer, having Koi ancestry, replied that his family had been Hiervandaan (from hereabouts) since “Sommer altyd” (for ever just) and the name for the wine wa born. That's the kind of association Mark Solms brought to Delta.

The Lekkerwijn rosé label was signed with the mark of the 1690 owner of a nearby farm slain by Silberbach, one of the early joint owners of Delta. The dispute in which the unfortunate neighbour died is reputed to have been over Silberbach’s wife Ansela, a freed slave.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Making Biblical wine

As to wine at Delta, the Solms family had been making it in Germany long before the first Solms left for southern Africa seven generations before Mark, Delta's current owner was born. Mark took over in 2002 and set about learning what he could about wine making, not just from modern technology but from Biblical times. He told me he felt that the art of making wine for the senators and pharaohs of the ancient world died with, among other things, the the Barbarian Invasion of Rome. What survived during their occupation was how to make house wine. Well, what else would you serve to barbarians?

I didn't mention that at least some of the invaders were Celts and probably drank whisky.

Let me get back to the theme, the benefits of Mark’s researches into the methods of the ancients enhance his new wine, a Shiraz Afrikana to be launched in September.

At that time, 2002, there were three Delta products to choose from, all containing blends of the Rhône type grapes Mark has grown to supplement the traditional Cape varieties, believing Rhône vines are more suited to the Cape’s dry summers than those originating from the wetter climate and more generous soils of France.

My wife was with me and enjoying Mark's company and, hereabouts, there was more to come. 

www.solms-delta.co.za

Conservation, Trees at Delta Solms winery

AT Delta Solms the wine tasting is inside the museum but let me first talk about the trees and woods that have been exposed and put to use now that the invaders have been repelled. 

All the trees are tagged, including the National Champion oak tree in front of the house planted around the time the farm was first occupied in 1690.

Mark Solms, the owner was kind enough to show us round. First stop was the clump of giant Chinese bamboo, light and strong, planted to provide roof trusses. They form a secret alcove where, to the accompaniment of the chimes of the bamboo, Tracy, from the museum, told stories of long ago to school groups.

Where the undergrowth had been cleared, sapling yellowwoods have sprouted, camphor trees grow to monster size.
Originally farm concessions were given out on the understanding that if a tree was cut down, one would be planted to take its place, while not always adhered to, this resulted in the planting of a variety of oak trees. Not just gnarled monsters that a Cavalier king could hide in, but reminders of the tall straight forest giants felled two centuries ago to provide planks for the ‘Hearts of Oak’ of the British navy.
The pictures are of my wife and Mark in the bamboo grove and the other, believe it or not, is an oak.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Khoisan and Japanese relics

At Delta Solms, when the archaeologists started to dig they found not just the remains of an old building but also relics of a past civilisation dating back to the Late Stone Age. I found it fascinating to imagine how ancient hands had made and worked with the relics. It was all described in the museum’s display cabinets and panels and but what made it more mystic was that I was transported into their world by the haunting voice over of a Khoisan storyteller.

The cabinets also hold Japanese ceramics from the days when the farm was founded in 1690 under the Dutch East India Company, the cheaper Chinese pottery of later British times, mixed with some produced in England and forced on the colonies by the East India Company and the Westminster government’s policy of trade monopoly.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Delta Winery History at every turn

I'd often passed the Delta winery on my way from Stellenbosch to Franschhoek but when I eventually found my way there I found the winery worth a visit but the people fascinating. The turn off is just after crossing the Dwaarse River bridge on the Franschhoek road and lies at the end of a long driveway. The first person I met was Tracey Randle, a vivacious young ‘girl next door’, who already had a master’s degree in history and archaeology and was busy with a PhD. The museum she was in charge of had its beginnings in the Mark Solms, the owner's interest in archaeology and his desire to tell the real story of the Cape of Good Hope in a way that people could relate to. Mark was, at that time, and may still be, a professor who consulted at Groote Schuur. Mark sought advice from historians, archaeologists and conservation architects and when Dr Antonia Malan looked the place over she commented that the reason for the distance between the old wine cellar, which housed the museum, and the main house being more than normal was probably because there had been a building in between. That's only the beginning. There's more history and historical events being played out at Delta than you could shake a stick at.

The picture is what the archaeologists found between the main house and the museum. 

www.solms-delta.co.za 

 

Cowboys at Kersefontein

When I visited a recent innovation at the farm was horse riding, not on regulated trails but real cowboy stuff. Telling us about it Julian said he told riders ‘there are some cattle over there on the horizon go and fetch them, I’ll go round left, you go right and we’ll meet over there’. This allowed the riders to choose their route and made it far more interesting.

To add to the feeling of the old West Julian had some wild horses on the farm which Tertius Swart from Bloemfontein, South Africa’s own horse whisperer had tamed.

As soon as the sun had warmed the wheat, Julian was impatient to get on with the harvest but, as we walked along the passageway past that skull, he mentioned it was that of the last Hippo shot in the Cape Peninsula in 1869 and was apparently shot in the Berg river where it flows in front of the house lawns.

As we walked out, Julian casually pointed out a row of guns one of which shot the last hippo. The gun was made by Joseph Manton, London in the late 1700’s and was given to Julian’s great-great-great-grandfather by the Earl of Caledon, the Cape Governor.

At that time the approach in the brochure was via Malmesbury and Hopefield, a charming drive through grape and wheat country. You could return via Velddrif and the R27 coast road giving you the option of visits to the coastal towns along the way but it is noticeably longer.

You could fly yourself in and land on the farm's strip but, before you submit your flight plan, you'll have to check with Julian.

www.kersefontein.co.za

Classical music

Browsing through the Kersefontein notes I found in my interview with the owner, Julian Melck, that for his birthday he had not rushed off to climb Kilimanjaro (which he said was on his bucket list) or dashed into the air to jump out of a plane but had held a Prom on the front lawn. Invited guests were properly dressed in evening clothes and long dresses and those form the forces in Best Blues while Justin conducted a n orchestra n Brahms, Bizet, Greig and Lloyd Weber. All this on a holiday venue on the banks of the Orange River. Fantastic! And The file is not closed!

www.kersefontein.co.za

           

Wild Boar

At Kersefontein the cottages are set up for self catering but when I was there, one of the highlights was dinner of wild boar served by Julian in the main house.The boar was, at that time, shot on the farm by Julian himself to protect his crops from too much damage. The normal food is good wholesome farm fare, the kind of thing a good trencherman would expect in the days of Queen Victoria. You might want to enjoy an aperitif or an after dinner brandy in the Slip Bar or just have a stroll along the banks of the Berg river, or, then again, you may be lucky enough to get Julian to entertain on the grand piano.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

A storehouse of history

Kersefontein is a national monument but is kept going like any farm. On the day I visited, I was lucky the mist hadn't lifted or Julian, the owner having served breakfast to his paying guests, would have  been off on the combine. Having nothing better to do, he showed my wife and me round the house. First the passage with the scull of what I assumed was some kind of large bush pig or other but turned out to be that of the last hippo shot in the Berg river. He showed us into the lounge with its grand piano and furniture from 1690 and the 18th century, all carefully looked after as family heirlooms. Among the many portraits is one of Esau Coetzee who served four generations of the Melcks and taught Julian to ride. The house is a veritable storehouse of history and we were lucky to see round it before the wheat dried enough for the combine.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Kersefontein

Having finished with Rickety Bridge, I was scratching around in my files when I found a note on Kersefontein farm on the Berg river. I've checked and it is still owned by the Melcks and is still taking visitors. The old house was originally built in 1740 but was bought by Martin Melck in 1770. Martin had emigrated to the Cape in 1740   to work for the Dutch East India Company when jobs were scarce in his native Prussia. He worked on the silver mine scam at Stellenbosch for a while (I'll get to that another day) but did well and when he won a contract to supply meat to the Company, he bought Kersefontein. While the farm is now a National Monument, the present owner, Martin works it as a mixture of farm and cowboy ranch.

www.kersefontein.co.za

Duncan Spence introduced light lunches served inside or on the terrace but the addition of the restaurant meant it was possible to eat outside on a terrace, which is enclosed and cosy in the winter months. When Duncan Spence took over this was the wine tasting area and was initially converted into offices before the final remodelling into an eatery.

The restaurant was serviced from a bar in the modern cellar, its temperature control installation dating from Alan Tonkin.

Duncan Spence added to the range of wines being produced with a blended red and a blended white, both bearing the name Duncan’s Creek.

Continuing the tradition of prize-winning wines Duncan Spence has won several awards. The winery has competed overseas, winning several international awards and among its accolades is the Decanter UK.
Never mind the prizes, for me the Rickety Bridge Sauvignon Blanc ranks among the best in the world especially when drunk on the terrace looking at the mountans.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Duncan Spence at Rickety Bridge

Duncan Spence took over the farm at auction in 2000 and made a number of changes aimed at attracting the tourist as well as promoting the sale of wine.

The house was refurnished into comfortable overnight accommodation.

The old sunken concrete tank in front of the old cellar was turned into a fishpond.

The old cellar area was completely remodelled into a conference centre and a consecrated chapel in which marriages can take place turned this area into a wedding venue which attracted a stream of local and overseas brides.

The tasting area was also extended and in fine weather tasting is enjoyed on the verandah looking out across the valley to the mountains.

What to show? The fish tank, the interior and the view?

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/bees-in-my-bonnet

Behind Rickety Bridge

Outside, Len pointed to the back retaining wall, which he built mainly with rocks he had taken from the ground he excavated behind the kitchen and house. He also pointed to the water storage dams, which were added for better water pressure in the house and mentioned that he thought the work involved in the wall and the dams with their pumps and equipment were the last straw for Robin Singer.

The rising slope behind the building is a great background, but it is easy to see why retaining walls would be necessary if any extension was being planned. It is also easy to understand how an escalation in mortgage rates adding to the cost of all the work the singers did to Rickety Bridge would strain a budget but the singers put more than money into the project and I think it showed.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Rickety Bridge kitchen

In the kitchen, Len Raymond pointed to to the nook in the corner beside the old fireplace, saying it would originally have been contained the baking oven, heated by a flue from the fire, with a door through which the bread and other baking would be loaded. The nook would have had a wide shelf above the oven in which a slave, or servant, would have slept. ‘Whichever one the boss was sleeping most with at the time’, according to Len.
It's not so much the structure of the old houses that interests me but what it tell us of how the people lived and worked. Anyway, here is a picture of the old kitchen, minus the old fireplace and after several renovations.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Horse transport

In going round the Rickety Bridge house at the time the Singers were renovating, the builder Len Raymond made several comments. In the lounge, pointing to where new, better dressed, beams had been used when the wings were extended he mentioned that the new beams were probably brought by ox-wagon from Knysna by the Dirkse van Schalkwyks. He pointed out that the same changeover could be seen in the accommodation on the other side of the dining room.

In the kitchen, Len pointed to the stub of a beam sticking out of the side wall and, sighting along the beam over the fireplace, commented that the stump was ‘near enough’ to have been the end of the original beam before it was cut during some renovation.

What I enjoyed was the thought of someone dragging timber from Knysna on the east coast over the mountain passes to Franschoek. In those days men were really men and horses were heavy and strong, not the thoroughbreds that look so good in the paddock and come last when you have a bet on them.

ricketybridgewinery.com

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.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

History Inside Rickety Bridge

Inside the house at Rickety Bridge, Len Raymond commented that the house had been built T shaped rather than a straight farmhouse. Had it been straight, the roof beams would have been set at right angles to the front wall and, since the beams in the dining area show no sign of having been moved, they must have run across the room when it was built.

In the middle of the dining room Len pointed out where a wall had been removed. The wall would have divided the area into two rooms, a voorkamer, front room, and an agterkamer, back room, with the present wall separating the agterkamer from the kombuis or kitchen.

It would have been in this middle wall that the wall cupboard would have originally been situated.

The pictures show the original wall cabinet and the elegant dining room of the house.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

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.

www.ricketybridge.com

Rickety Bridge Robins and Interest rates

My last notes from Celia Singer at Rickety Bridge confirmed it was the Singers who started the label with the Robins on it. Her last word was still reminiscent of 'Carry On', however. Commenting on the old ‘rickety bridge’ before it was replaced by the new concrete bridge by Robin Singer, Celia said it was a set of boards sitting on top of some pieces of railway track. When a car came on to the bridge at one end, the planks lifted like a see-saw and only came down with a clap when the car reached the middle of the plank. It's different now, more acceptable but not the same adventure.

Unfortunately, I want to warn all those diving in to get a mortgage in these days of incredibly low interest rate - in 1999, interest rates climbed to what seems an unbelievable 25% and the financial burden became unacceptable and the Tonkins left Rickety Bridge.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Rickety Bridge Snakes and See-saw

The interest Celia had taken in the Rickety Bridge house became clear as she talked of what the house and its bridge had been like in the past. She mentioned that when the McNaughts took over, the farm had been really dilapidated and it was they who set about planting vines.

The house was revamped by Robin Singer who had used a builder, Len Raymond from Paarl, who specialised in Old Cape houses. The house had originally been a T shaped Cape Dutch house with a central room which ran through the house to the back, with a room on either side. In the old days, the people would have slept on straw mattresses in the side rooms.

The house would have been built with half doors, so that the top half could be left open to allow a breeze to circulate in the hot months, with the bottom closed to keep out the animals and snakes.

Commenting on the old ‘rickety bridge’ before it was replaced by the new concrete bridge by Robin Singer, Celia said it was a set of boards sitting on top of some pieces of railway track. When a car came on to the bridge at one end, the planks lifted like a see-saw and only came down with a clap when the car reached the middle of the plank.

Since my association with Rickety Bridge came through sailing I hope you won't mind the link or the picture of Dee Cafari.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books/vital-spark

Winter fun at Rickety Bridge

Celia told me that, while the Tonkins were there, the Winter and its rain brought little relief. They found a small ancient tractor on the premises. When this overturned, nearly trapping the driver, they bought a new model. Using this to plough the South East vineyard after heavy rain, the driver got stuck. No doubt being unwilling to let it be known that he had got the new tractor into difficulties, the driver kept trying to free the tractor until the big wheels were well bogged down above the axles. At that stage he called the Tonkins.

The Tonkins called their neighbour for help and the neighbour sent a tractor, which, after much revving and smoking, joined the Tonkin’s machine in the mire.

A third tractor was sent for and, watched in anxious disbelief by those present, it too sank into the mud.

The neighbour then brought an enormous unit which, to everyone’s relief, pulled first one and then a second and finally the Tonkin’s tractor out of the mud.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Iced grapes

For Celia, at Rickety Bridge harvest time held other problems. It is traditional that the grapes must all be picked before Easter and temperatures at that time of the year can be high and unsuitable for grape storage and processing. Before the Tonkins built the new cellar, the old cellar’s cooling system was anything but perfect and had to be supported on hot days by whatever ice could be made or acquired. Celia remembers sending the bakkie to Paarl to collect bags of ice, half of which had melted by the time the bakkie returned.

The pipes laid for irrigation had not been buried but were lying on the surface and as they sweated in the night the moisture attracted small animals that gnawed the pipes, making repairs to the lines an ongoing feature of life at Rickety Bridge until the pipes were safely buried.

www.sullatoberdalton.com/books

Paulina's ghost at Rickety Bridge

Carrying on with Celia at the wine farm.

Being marketing minded, Celia promoted the idea of Paulina’s ghost being around, telling clients at the tasting that if they drank enough wine they might be able to see Paulina. While people laughed, the idea stuck and became legend but backlashed at harvest time.

In those days it was fashionable to harvest at midnight and the pickers felt the clammy hand of a ghost in every breath of breeze and heard the rustle of a spectre’s dress in each flutter of the leaves. Celia spent a good deal of time reassuring nervous wide eyed pickers that they were not about to be snatched into another world. 

www.ricketybridge.com

Carry on at Rickety Bridge

The Tonkins at Rickety Bridge highlights the enjoyment I had as a freelance journalist and reading over my notes about the Tonkins brings back all the fun. First some facts:-

In 1997, the Tonkins, Alan and Celia, took over Rickety Bridge farm. Celia told me the house was gorgeous but the cellar was broken down and little more then a shed with vats in it.

While the farm was hard work, it produced well. 

The cellar, however, was totally inadequate for producing the award winning quality wines the Tonkins were aiming at and, in 1997-98, the Tonkins built a new boutique cellar, installing state of the art wine pressing and cooling, at a total cost in excess of R6 million.

They produced Sémillon, Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and a Shiraz and were the first to introduce the red blend Paulina’s Reserve.

During their time at Rickety Bridge the Tonkins won a number of awards for their wine.

In 1996 Silver medal         ’96 vintage Chardonnay

             Silver medal         ’95 vintage Cabernet Sauvignon

             Bronze medal       ’96 vintage Semillon

             Bronze medal       ’96 vintage Sauvignon Blanc

             Bronze medal       ’95 vintage Merlot

In 1998 Double gold         ’96 vintage Paulina’s Reserve

            

In 1999 Michael Angelo International Wine Awards

    Double gold and best wine        ’98 Chiraz            

    Silver                   ’97 Chardonnay

             Silver medal        ’99 Sauvignon Blanc (My personal favourite  -SD)

            

Celia loved the place despite commenting that, at times, it was like living in a Carry On film. Wait for the next installment! 

www.sullatoberdalton.com

Forest fire

I just want to finish what Deborah wrote about her stay at Rickety Bridge before going on in my experience as a journalist to the next occupant of Rickety Bridge.
In an earlier note it was mentioned that firs had been planted on the slope to retain the soil but Deborah's experience highlighted that benefits come with responsibilities.

Two little boys from the farm one Saturday made a campfire and set the forest alight. Had the wind changed direction we might well have lost the house, so it was a few nasty hours. That prompted the beginning of removing the pine forest from the hill at the back of the house, and allowing the indigenous fynbos to regenerate. The pines had been planted ages ago and then not looked after so they were useless as a crop and a huge fire risk as well as being unhelpful to the original mountain flora.

It was all an education in itself, and there was so much good that could have been brought about had one been able to stay long enough.
The photo shows how the pines have been re-established on the slope behind the winery.

I've mentioned before that one stumbles across stories and this fire incident would make a great highlight if I were doing a novel about the winelands.Whether a literary agent would agree, I don't know. Two of the stories in Bees in my Bonnet were written to test the idea  but I was told, nobody buys books about South Africa unless they are written by Wilbur Smith.

www.amazon.co.uk/Bees-my-Bonnet-Short-stories-x/dp/1541345673/ref=sr_1_2?

French Heritage

As a freelance journalist I found Deborah's letter about what she and Robin Singer did at Rickety Bridge a highlight and here is a bit more.

We tried very hard to keep the feeling of a family working farmhouse, vineyards and cellar  - in fact when people came to the tasting rooms we built onto the end of the old cellar, they all said how different it was from the other farms - more like France in feel. I suppose you could look at that in several ways - Franschhoek being so proud of its French heritage should have given that impression, even if we were trying to promote South African wine in its own right, but Rickety Bridge was the last of those small working farmhouse and cellar farms, and a little gem, so I am not altogether happy with the huge amount of development which has robbed it of that distinction, and lost forever that feeling which made it so very special.

We were so lucky in the people who helped us. Len Raymond, our builder, was a complete Cape Dutch fanatic, and his knowledge of the history and construction of these wonderful houses was a huge factor in lots of what we did. Rowan Pape was a marvellous architect with a real understanding of what would and would not work and given the passion which every one of us approached the project, how could we lose? I was very sad to have to leave it.   - especially to the ravages of conference-centre builders! Those places are two a penny in and around Franschhoek. Small is beautiful more often than we realise, and Rickety Bridge was unique.

Whether one agrees with Debs or not, progress marches on and business is business.

www.sullatoberdalton.com

I'm going to continue Deborah's tale of what they did at Rickety Bridge because it shows the care she and Robin took to restore the old house -  We discovered the lintel of an old high door going into the courtyard from the room behind the voorkamer (front reception room) so we reinstated that and the bakeoven, and having discovered the original lintels in the front windows, we put those back to their original size, gave them wide reveals to let in more light, and reglazed them with old glass which made a huge difference.

We had the wall cupboard taken out and carefully restored before lovingly putting it back safely in its place. The kitchen and laundry rooms were rebuilt as plumbing etc had to be rethought, and the gable was restored to its proper proportions.

All the woodwork which we had to replace or put in new was done with indigenous  wood, as the Baltic pine which would have been used was not obtainable. We had all the door furniture carefully made as it would have been for the period.

We think that originally there must have been a screen going across the voorkamer at the front door end, but could find no trace of it. Many of them were removed and sold over the years, and sadly we thought that one must be lost entirely.

 Upstairs we had to compromise, as Cape Dutch houses would not have had bathrooms. (I had a gentle battle with Rowan Pape, our excellent architect who suggested marble for the bathrooms and when I said "no hotel bathrooms in this house" he kindly agreed to try the Johnstons white tiles laid diamond shape I asked for.  (I hope they are still there at Rickety Bridge, echoing the lines of the thatch.) (They are, or were in 2005)

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The Robins at Rickety Bridge

Once in occupation, Robin Singer and Deb discussed using the old name Paulinas Dal but after some heart searching decided to stick with Rickety Bridge.

Next, Debs wrote, we called in the University who came and dug around a bit without uncovering much of interest. The house had been messed about a lot during the fifties, a wing had been put on at the back of the right hand side of the house as you look at it from the front, and there was a dreadful temporary lean-to on the other side at the back. We had to demolish those altogether. The windows all along the front stoep had no reveals and had been made taller, so their proportions were all wrong, and the gable itself was a mess as far as proportions went. By the way, the fleur-de-lys motifs on the label come from the gable, used like notes of music, as the Robins on the label are singing - just a pun on Robin Singer's name.

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Singer at Rickety Bridge

I'm writing these notes to introduce some of the people I met as a journalist before starting to write novels. The story of Rickety Bridge and it's occupants is, of course, a story in itself and I was privileged to be asked to research it. In some ways it led me into the kind of village stories I enjoy writing. Anyway, let's get on.

When Robin Singer took over the farm, his objective was not only to make a good wine but to create a recognisable brand and develop a market.

He set about doing this with his partner Deborah and during the two years they were there managed to leave some mark of their presence.

The robins on the gate and on the wine label are reminders of their occupancy and Robin managed to introduce wines to a number of quality outlets including the Mount Nelson and, in Franschhoek, Le Quartier Francais.

The old rickety bridge had become even more rickety and as clients were reluctant to venture across it, had to be replaced.

Not being a wine maker, Robin recruited a vintner, the first incumbent, an American, proving less able than his recommendation. The second, David Lockley, from Blaauwklippen, proved a master his wines found their way on to the tables of discerning wine drinkers.

To entice the growing number of tourists coming to Franschhoek to sample the wines they were making, Robin built the first proper wine tasting area on the farm.

When contacted, Robin Singer introduced Deborah and her lively notes were a pleasure to read.

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Selling Rickety Bridge

The McNaughts leave. In the end, age caught up with Nigel's father and he had to give up doctoring to run the agricultural side of the farm. Not a difficult decision because he had become disillusioned with how medicine had become a money making business but a decision that reduced the family income.

The McNaughts struggled on for some time but by 1995 it had become obvious the only solution to the heavy drain of their overdraft was to sell up and move.

Visiting them at Stoney Brook farm, which has proved a good move and is now a successful wine farm and winery, busy with tourists.

One of Joy’s recollections is of Mina, who saw Paulina's ghost at Rickety Bridge, making tea and forcing her to sit and eat when things were getting out of control. Like anyone who has come in contact with Mina, Joy can not praise her enough.

The McNaughts sold the renamed Rickety Bridge to Robin Singer, whom Mina described as a Scotsman and a nice man. Is that so unusual?

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Rickety Bridge and Stoney Brook

What income they did have, and any money they could scrape together, the McNaughts spent on improving the farm’s production capability. Their first step being to uproot the pear trees and plant vines.

Joy, with her three children, moved onto the farm, leaving Nigel doctoring to pay the bills, and started to learn to make wine. Her experiences are recorded in the book she has written – Headlong into the Red. She tells of how she called Nigel in tears to say she was resigning . Nigel’s reply was that she wasn’t allowed to resign, that he had a consulting room full of patients and she’d better just get on with things.

Having met Nigel in Joy’s company, this repost is a reflection of the financial strain rather than their close relationship. 

Heesom had for some time been at Zorgvleit and the Sanddrift manor house – now renamed Rickety Bridge, had again fallen into less than perfect condition. Joy tells of lying in bed one night and wakening to find she could see the stars through a hole where the roof thatch had blown off.

Some of the McNaught’s hard earned money was spent on improving the labourer’s cottages, unfortunately not to a standard Joy would have considered acceptable but to the absolute limit of what money was available.

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