In what ELMARI RAUTENBACH calls a ‘dialogue between centuries’, new owners Nell and Kevin Harris and architect Arn Erasmus are looking back to the past of the 300-year-old farm as they guide it forward into the 21st century.
They used to hunt for koekemakranka (a wild fruit) on the rocky hillside, dig tunnels in the riverbed and play hide-and-seek among the teff bales in the old barn attic. For 83-year-old Polla Roux from Bellville, Libertas wasn’t just history; it was home.
Born on the family farm, Doornbosch, Polla moved with his parents and brother into the jonkershuis at Libertas when he was six, following his grandfather’s death. “My father became the winemaker and helped run the farm with his sister Elizabeth (Roux) and her husband, Andries Blake,” he recalls. “Andries bought the farm in 1940 from an extended family member.”
In an almost century-long line of Roux owners, Jacobus Petrus ‘Koos Platdak’ Roux was the first. He acquired Libertas at an 1827 auction after his brother-in-law, Johannes Petrus de Villiers, had been declared insolvent. The third and final Roux didn’t perform very well, Polla says. According to family lore, the manor house was in such a mess when his uncle and aunt took over that they even found feed bags stored in a bedroom.
“But Oom Andries and Tannie Bettie transformed that farm into a paradise with tennis courts, oak trees, cattle, horses, pigs, vineyards and gardens – all much loved by my six cousins, my brother and me. I am the last person in my generation to have grown up on Libertas. My father was the last to produce wine in the old cellar and my grandfather was the last to be buried in one of the graveyard’s gabled vaults.”
Libertas was originally granted to the vrijburger Jan Cornelisz van Oudbeijerland, also known as Jan Bombam, by Governor Simon van der Stel on 23 October 1689. By the time the next owner, Cornelisz’s neighbour Hans Jürgen Grimpe, had merged the land with his own and expanded it considerably, and Adam Tas had married Grimpe’s widow Elisabeth van Brakel, Libertas was a notable district landmark.
Sadly, after three and a half centuries and years of recent neglect, the farm has lost its former splendour. This is about to change.
At the start of last year, Nell and Kevin Harris became the new owners of Libertas. Together with their partners, they are set to undertake an extensive renovation and development project – pending final approval – to transform the historic farm into a premier tourist attraction and community resource.
Leading the design process is architect Arn Erasmus. A former director at Stellenbosch-based VKDB Architects and Interior Design, Arn recently founded his own practice, Arn Erasmus Architects. Having previously collaborated with Nell, he took on the Libertas project as his first major assignment. Working from a drawing board in a temporary office within the farm’s old slave quarters, Arn’s first step was to harness his artistic instincts.
“The project was in its brainstorming stage. Nell wanted to restore heritage buildings, having consulted experts and appointed Graham Jacobs as heritage consultant. She also wanted accommodation, as she and her husband are in the hospitality business.”
In fact, the Harris family are well-known hospitality entrepreneurs. One of their projects was to help transform Ellerman House, a 1906 seaside residence in Bantry Bay, into an exquisite and internationally acclaimed boutique hotel.
Arn started by measuring and sketching each building on the Libertas homestead. “I wanted to grasp the possibilities: the available space for accommodation, the placement of structures, the guest circulation. I spent weeks analysing the views, access routes and predominant wind direction. I visited other historic Cape werfs to understand how they were originally designed.”
What struck him was how untouched this particular part of Libertas still appeared. “Not overly manicured or prettified, even though it’s only a portion of the original farm.”
In fact, the well-known cultural historian Hans Fransen described it as an ‘intact’ Cape Dutch werf, and for this reason both Arn and Nell are committed to managing the repurposing of the buildings with care. “I call it restraint architecture,” says Arn. “It’s about holding back, not looking cool or modern for the sake of it. It’s about respecting the site and its history.”
During a walkabout on the farm, Nell leads the way in a pair of work boots, a tartan skirt and a pink jumper with the words L’amour est déclaré (Love is declared), her glasses hanging from the neckline. It’s a cool, misty day and the first shoots have appeared on the newly planted oak saplings on the front lawn. A tributary of the Dwars River, itself a tributary of the Eerste, borders a section called Die Tuin at the garden’s edge, where Nell envisions reviving the flower beds, “with a water feature in the middle and pathways for strolling”.
The old brandy cellar beside the dam – still with alcohol deposits dotting the walls like glitter – will be turned into a restaurant with a deck overlooking the wetland and its birdlife, and beyond to the Simonsberg mountain.
The werf includes the narrow T-shaped jonkershuis, which was possibly the “staande woonhuys” (standing residence) in Cornelisz’s 1690 sale deed. Hans Fransen believed Johann (Jan) Bernhard Hoffmann, Stellenbosch’s deputy magistrate, had built or expanded it into its current gabled H-shape starting in 1768, after three marriages and fathering 18 children.
There are stables from 1779, a fowl run with slave quarters, and a cellar. All but the cellar will become guest suites, each with a bathroom, small courtyard and splash pool. The stables will double up as a reception area.
The manor house will be an exclusive guest house with a whisky lounge, cosy seating indoors and on the porch, and a tea room in one side-courtyard. Retractable blinds will allow the courtyard to serve as a sunroom in winter or an outdoor venue in summer with an extended garden patio.
“The local architectural language of the time is simple,” says Arn. “Usually long, narrow buildings with pitched roofs. Rooms were never more than six or seven metres wide – a limit set by the length of the yellowwood ceiling joists, which made it easy to expand the house by adding wings in an L-, T- or H-shape. Walls were massive, sometimes more than half a metre thick.”
He points to a partly exposed cellar wall. “Stone and mud, sometimes even rubble, were used as building materials, after which the walls were lime-washed.” The cellar is earmarked to be the new spa, featuring a new building running alongside the existing one with a narrow pool between them.
“All the new buildings will be either at the back of the historic ones or on the periphery,” he adds. “We intentionally didn’t place any new buildings within the werf. The new design will also not imitate the original form.
Contrary to legend, it was Jan Cornelisz who named Libertas when he received the grant, not Adam Tas. As was customary at the time, the name reflected a value or virtue – in this case, Libertas meaning ‘freedom’ in Latin. It was not, as the tale has been told, a witty entry in Tas’s diary upon his release from Cape Town Castle’s Donker Gat (dark hole).
“It will follow the lines, the proportions and the simplicity, but interpret them in a contemporary way. The aim is not to mimic, but to respond.”
The manor house will undergo restoration, replacing the modern parquet in three front rooms with original Batavian bricks as preserved in the fourth, and reinstalling the internal staircase linking the kitchen to the attic for upstairs accommodation and a lounge.
“We found the remains of the original banisters when we explored the attic,” says Nell. Almost all the original ceilings, most doors and window openings, the original vine at the back entrance and the fine holbol gable above it (considered the older of the two gables) have survived.
However, what makes Libertas truly distinctive is the nearly untouched painted murals covering the interior walls of three of the four front rooms. “The artists are believed to have been Jan Adam Hartman and his son, commissioned by Hoffmann,” Nell explains. The murals, primarily in greys, greens and old gold on a watermelon-pink background, depict the various occupations of Hoffmann’s children and, in one of the rooms, the seasons. They include a self-portrait of the older artist.
A team of experts from the South African Institute for Heritage Science and Conservation recently spent several days cleaning and analysing a small area to determine the work needed to restore all the panels. It would, no doubt, be a lengthy labour of love, much like that of the two individuals dedicated to liberating again a place that families once called home.