Fraserburg

Accommodation | Activities | Restaurants | Business Directory

Geography and History

Fraserburg is a lovely little town in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Fraserburg is a comfortable 5 hour drive from Cape Town. It is one of the most authentic and well preserved Karoo towns left in South Africa.

Named after a Scottish cleric and immigrant, Rev Colin Fraser, and a certain church elder, Meyburg, Fraserburg was founded in the West Nuweveld in 1851.

Fraserburg and its surroundings are still very much unspoilt and are guaranteed to stay that way! It is a town worth visiting and we are quite sure, once you have been you will return again and again. And you'll always be welcome.

There are many Victorian era houses in the town dating to the era of the Wool boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Activities

Breastworks: 15 Schalkwyk Street. Partial remains of a wall, built in 1870, as protection during a possible war with the Koranna. Used during the Anglo-Boer War.

Corbelled Houses - Unique to the area.

Gansfontein Palaeo Surface: The rocks exposed here were originally deposited some 250 million years ago. On the farm Riethuisies there is a distinct trace fossil of a gastropod and the same trace fossil was found recently in Antartica, of great importance for Palaeontologists. For visits tel 023 571 1265

Old Parsonage Museum: Built in 1856 for the Rev CA Bamberger, the first minister to the newly established congregation, at a cost of £1 100. It has a unique floor plan as four of the interior walls are curved. The building contract specified that 100 planks of yellowwood should be used. Presently the building houses a museum collection and an exhibition of fossils.

Pepperpot: The six-sided structure, unique in South Africa, has become the symbol of Fraserburg. It was built by Adam Jacobs in 1861. The bell was rung whenever fire broke out, as well as an evening curfew rung at nine pm when all coloureds were expected to be out of the town. Even after the curfew was no longer required, the bell continued to be rung at this time until the 1950s.

Powder Magazine: Erected by John Findlay in 1870, to store ammunition in case war should break out with the Korannas under leadership of Kupido Pofadder, to limit danger from fire. It was also used by the British troops during the Anglo-Boer War.

Power Station: 2 Voortrekker Street. The town obtained its first direct current in 1938. During September 1956 this was converted to alternating current, and on 24 June 1983 Fraserburg received its first Eskom power. Seven Lister Blackstone engines may still be seen.

Walking Route: A map can be purchased at the local museum in Fraserburg.