St Johns Anglican Church

In the little village of Bathurst is the St John's Anglican Church. It is the oldest unaltered Anglican church in South Africa and was built in 1834 during the frontier wars.

It is surrounded by the most interesting grave stones, some of them dating back and belonging to original British Settlers and their decedents. Because of it's country setting it is also surrounded by a lot of vegetation amongst others some beautiful Bougainvilleas.

The Big Pineapple

During my series on The British Settlers is posted about the history of Bathurst here and here. The biggest attraction in Bathurst is not an historic one, but a bit of a gimmick. Bathurst is in the heart of one of the biggest pineapple growing areas in South Africa. The Bathurst Pineapple Growers Association is base on Summerhill Farm on the outskirts of town. Some years ago the farmers from the Association visited Australia on a fact finding mission and saw what was then the biggest pineapple in the world. The Aussies being out arch rivals in sport, they decided that they wanted to beat them and put one up that was bigger.

Thus the world's biggest pineapple now stands in Bathurst, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It stands 16.7m high and has 3 floors. It is constructed out of a fibreglass outer skin covering a steel and concrete superstructure. The ground floor has a gift shop full of pineapple goodies such as jams and chutneys, locally made pottery and puzzles as well as t-shirts to name but a few of the items for sale.

The 1st floor has tourist information and static displays of the Pineapple Story. It is a must visit for kids doing school projects. The 2nd floor has a continuous DVD on the Eastern Cape pineapple industry and leads up to the observation deck with magnificent 360°views over the surrounding rolling farm lands to the Indian Ocean.

Tractor's Twilight Years

In my series on the British Settlers I have posted about the village of Bathurst. In the village is the Bathurst Protea Hotel, a real country hotel. In front of the hotel in the long grass I found this old vintage tractor just as the sun was starting to set. It felt appropriate to photograph him in the sunset.

British Settlers - Settling down

After my first British Settlers post Ann had a couple of questions which I will hopefully answer today. The British public was invited to apply to come down to the Cape Colony. Because of the hard times back in England, nearly 100 000 people showed interest out of which 4 500 were selected. The Settlers came in parties and each party was allocated a farm. For this and the seed and implements they had to pay a deposit.

Most of the Settlers came from towns and cities and had very little knowledge of farming. This coupled with bad soil, harsh weather, thick bush, wild animals and the indigenous black people (the Xhosa) meant that the cards were stacked against the Settlers. To make matters worse, part of their contract stated that they had to stay on the farms for two years before they were allowed to leave the farms and move into towns. The Xhosa saw the fact that a big number of white people were moving onto their land as a hostile sign and kept on raiding farms and attacking settlements. The area saw 9 major frontier wars over a period of about 100 odd years. After two years a lot of the Settlers started moving into towns like Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and Bathurst. Here they went back to doing the work they did back in England and became a lot more successful. The farmers left behind now also had more land for farming and thus also started to make more of a success of the farming practises.

In the village of Bathurst you will find the oldest unaltered Anglican church in South Africa. Built in 1834, St Johns were built not just as a church, but also a a fortification. The walls were built very thick and the windows werer nothing more than narrow slits that could be used to shoot out of. The Anglican church was linked to the Methodist church via a trench to make movement between the churches possible during attacks.

One of the other significant buildings in Bathurst is the Pig and Whistle, the oldest licenced pub in South Africa. Also dating back to the 1830's, it was known as Widow Hartley's untill the Second World War. In nearby Port Alfred the Royal Airforce was based at 43 Air School and the pilots used the pub as their local hangout. They called the pub the Pig and Whistle, a name that stuck. The pub is still a very traditional pub while the inn is still open to passersby wanting to overnight.

British Settlers - The journey

Yesterday I said that I will do a couple of posts about the 1820 British Settlers, so here is part 1. I will keep the info short, because if I have to get my teeth into it, I will go on and on.

Before 1820, Port Elizabeth was the eastern end of the Cape Colony. To the east lived the indigenous black people of the area, namely the Xhosa. The colonial government got worried that they may attack the colony and decided to colonize the area and push the Xhosa back. About 6000 British Settlers arrived on our shores in April 1820. They were first housed in tents on the beach before being loaded, with all their possessions, onto ox wagons for the long journey to the farms allocated to them. Today the 120km journey from PE to Grahamstown and area takes about 80 minutes. In those days with only a track to follow through the bush, it took 6 - 10 days of hard slog.

The old ox wagon trail can still be seen in some area. There are also still evidence of some of the old inns and buildings that were built along the route. This was one of the inns along the way and is situated on the Kwantu Private Game Reserve. The inns did not exist in the very early day, but was developed in the years that followed as traffic along the route increased.

The village of Bathurst is situated about 70 south east of Grahamstown. The photo above is the Toposcope. From this spot the settling of the Settlers were overseen. Bathurst was supposed to become the main town of the area, but Grahamstown was selected. This meant that Bathurst never developed much and is still a very small country village. The Toposcope is a monument that points out a big number of the original Settler farms.

Along the circular wall of the Toposcope is a number of plaques pointing out the original farms. Each plaque has the following information (from the top):
An arrow pointing out the direction, the distance from this point to the farm in miles, the name of the farm, the surname of the leader of the specific group, the county where they came from in Britain and the name of the boat they came on.

More on Bathurst tomorrow.