Mostert's Mill - rising from the ashes
In April 2021 Cape Town suffered from a huge runaway veld fire that destroyed, among others, the historic Reading Room of the Jagger Library, the Cape Dutch farmhouse De Meule and the iconic Mostert's Mill. It was probably the latter that Capetonians mourned the most, because it was a highly visible structure on the road between Cape Town and the southern suburbs. Ironically, the day before the fire, some renovations had just been completed at the Mill by Andy Selfe, who stoically returned to supervise the current reconstruction.
Built in 1796 (or possibly earlier, as believed by historian Dan Sleigh), Mostert’s Mill was the oldest working windmill in Africa. Sadly, while the resurrection and restoration of this well-loved Cape Town landmark is on schedule (estimated to be early in 2023) as a result of the proactive Friends of Mostert’s Mill and huge support in terms of financial help, materials and skills, the old homestead De Meule rots away after being gutted by the same fire. Its owner, the Department of Public Works and Transport (DPW), has made no attempt at saving or restoring it, not even halting the decay of its soft clay walls by putting a tarpaulin over it. De Meule predates Mostert’s Mill and was doubtless the miller’s house of the Welgelegen estate. Often dismissed as ‘the thatched house behind Mostert’s Mill’, it is an integral part of a surprisingly large complex that is a rare example of an 18th and 19th C werf that survives in the southern suburbs.
The land at Welgelegen was granted in 1676 to Cornelis Stevensz Botma, the owner of Zorgvliet (the site of the College of Music). Only 6 morgen in size, Welgelegen was transferred in 1703 to his grand-daughter Alida and her husband Johannes Heufke. By 1714 it had absorbed the neighbouring farm Altona (site of UCT’s Driekoppen Men’s Residence). Then followed several changes of ownership until Jacob van Reenen (1727-1793) bought it in 1756. His youngest son, Gysbertus van Reenen (1763-1827), was the next owner and he was responsible for building the Mill. After his death in 1827, his daughter Johanna Petronella inherited the property. Her husband was Sybrand Mostert (1791-1872) and so Welgelegen came into the ownership of the Mostert family, and the Mill came to bear its name. In 1873 Sybrand Mostert II (1825-1883) donated a small piece of land for the building of a little Dutch Reformed Chapel on the corner of Rhodes Avenue and Avenue Road, which was later used by the Mowbray Public School. Welgelegen remained in the Mostert family until 1889; the last owner was probably Sybrand Mostert III (1850-1923). The new owner was SJ Wilks, but he sold Welgelegen two years later to Cecil John Rhodes. Rhodes had an agreement with the Currey family that they could live at Welgelegen until the last of them died - that only happened in 1979!
YouTube Cape Town aerial video:
Hans Fransen is of the opinion that De Meule was probably Welgelegen’s earliest homestead, using a sketch made by Sir John Barrow in c.1799 as evidence. The drawing shows that De Meule was then already old enough to have had its ground-plan altered from a simple rectangle to a T. The image also showed blocked windows and the earliest type of end-gables. Fransen also points out that the surviving casement windows were decidedly smaller than those of the second half of the 18th century. At some point the Van Reenens decided to build themselves a newer house a little way off, which is the present-day homestead known as Welgelegen, and turned the original house into the miller’s house. This means that De Meule was likely one of the earliest surviving houses in the Cape, and its destruction by both the fire and the subsequent neglect is all the more bitter-sad.
The two houses are on different properties. As a DPW-owned building, De Meule was for 70 years used as a ministerial residence when Parliament was in Cape Town. This explains the extreme security – wasteful expenditure – surrounding De Meule. The Welgelegen Homestead, with its long approach facing the entrance gates on Rhodes Avenue and from which it is cut off by a high security fence topped with electric fencing, is on the University of Cape Town’s land – shamefully reminiscent of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall. And yet, most of the werf is surprisingly intact, even if its buildings are on opposite sides of the fence: the Welgelegen Homestead (rebuilt by Herbert Baker at Rhodes’s request); De Meule; Mostert’s Mill; the Mill’s threshing floor (very rare in the Cape Peninsula); a thatched, hipped and dormered stable between De Meule and Welgelegen (now also gutted); a sunken garden; many beautiful old werf walls and entrances, including the fine Cape Dutch entrance gates facing Rhodes Avenue; and the graveyard on the hillside. There are over 100 members of the Van Reenen and Mostert families buried there – all no doubt spinning in their proverbial graves at what has become of De Meule.
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