Description

Dutch Renaissance style shutters

Therina Groenewald: Dutch Renaissance style shutters – professional photographer.

GOVERNOR SIMON VAN DER STEL OF THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY (VOC), arrived at the Cape supply station in 1679. Estranged from his wife he arrived in the company of his children and sister-in-law, Cornelia Six. Back in the Netherlands Van der Stel had gained a solid background in viticulture at his vineyards in Muiderbergh. The art of wine and brandy making he learnt there he would soon implement here in the Cape.

THE ORIGINAL MANOR HOUSE, appears to have been designed in a late Dutch Renaissance style. The traveller Francois Valentijn (1666-1727) described it as a double storey dwelling with two or three steps leading to a front room or voorhuis, paved with white marble and red stone. There was a big pentagon in the shape of the Castle of Good Hope tiled into the centre of the floor. On both sides of the voorhuis were grand rooms, also with white marble floors.