Full History of Silverstream
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Silverstream Farm consists of over 2000 acres of almost inaccessible land in the Villiersdorp mountains.
Before 1896
Little is known of the early history of Silverstream Farm.
In 1750, The Cape Govmt decided that settlement in the areas of Cape, Drakenstein & Stellenbosch should be restricted. Accordingly some farmers looked further afield for pasturage.
The Govmt as early as 1703 granted permits to farmers to graze stock on outposts beyond the area of settlement. These grazing grounds were known as loan places - (leening plaats)
In 1813 Sir John Cradock abolished the system of loan places and allowed the occupiers to convert their farms to perpetual quitrent holdings, so affording them security of tenure.
Due to the lack of surveyors, there was often a wait of up to twenty five years or so before the property could be surveyed and a deed drawn up. Nevertheless the farmer was assured of having some title to his holding and was therefore able to erect more permanent buildings on his farm.
Just who made the trek into the little hidden valley and decided to settle there, and exactly when, is unknown. The first documented grant was issued to Daniel Barnard and we must assume that it was he who found the valley, tucked away in the mountain, and decided to build the typical flat roofed sheep/stockfarmers stone house in this beautiful but remote spot.
The homestead consisted of a four roomed building. The walls of which are 400mm thick, built of slabs of stone quarried from an outcrop behind the house. They were set in a daga/clay mixture and plastered with a clay mortar.
1896-1919
Silverstream , 2184.65 English acres, 1032 Morgen, 1095 Square Roods, was surveyed in November 1869 by Mr J.A. Kuys, Govmt land surveyor and on 24th June 1896 under the Caledon Quitrents Vol. 8 No 1 , a deed of grant was issued to Mr Daniel Francois Barnard.
Nothing is known of Mr Daniel Barnard, although it is presumed he built the house on Silverstream. I found his gravestone in the old section of the Villiersdorp graveyard, plot 375 row 27. The handsome granite headstone bears the Dutch inscription “ hy sal my door zijn raad celeiden tot den laatsten mijner dagen “ meaning “ He will guide me with his wisdom through the rest of my days”
Daniel was born on 26th July 1852 and died, presumably in Villiersdorp, on 24th June 1940. There is no mention of a wife or family on the gravestone.
He was therefore 44 yrs of age when he was given title to the farm and 67 yrs old when he sold it on 30th Aug 1919 to a Mr Wessel Andries Johannes Du Toit for 300 pounds sterling.
It is therefore possible that Daniel may have been occupying the farm for a number of years before he was given the grant in 1896, in which case he may have spent anything up to 40yrs or more on the farm.
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After 6 years Du Toit sold the farm to Christian Christoffel Jooste in Feb 1925.
Jooste immediately resold the farm in March 1925 to a 50/50 partnership of Mr William Claudius Smal and Mr Hendrik Christoffel Lotter of Caledon for 500 pounds sterling. Some time later Mr Lotter purchased his partners share and became sole owner of Silverstream.
1925 -1947
H.C.Lotter owned and farmed sheep on a number of Caledon Farms including Theewaterskloof and Silverstream.
Lotter sent some of his sheep up the mountain to Silverstream for the summer grazing and employed a shepherd Mr Sas De Kok ,who went to live in the house on Silverstream.
There was, and still is, no access by road to Silverstream farmstead from the Caledon side and herdsmen were employed to trek the sheep over the mountain from Lotter’s Caledon farms.
Barnard had constructed a wagon or cart track from the Worcester side of the mountain across the farms Wilde Paard Kraal and Pauls Gat in the late 1800’s and parts of the old trail are still to be seen, particularly on the steeper parts which were cut away and banked up to make a road. (The existance of this road is disputed by the local farmer although it can be clearly seen on the 1942 aerial photo)
De Kok lived at the Silverstream farmstead from 1925 to 1942, until Lotter moved him to a house on his farm at Theewaterskloof.
Sheep however were still grazed on Silverstream until 1947 when the sheep began to be plagued by a particular kind of tick. The tick problem multiplied rapidly and became such a problem that the sheep could no longer be grazed on Silverstream.
De Kok had four pack donkeys and used these to collect his basic supplies and provisions from Villiersdorp - following a difficult and treacherous route down from the mountain through the inhospitable Wolfieskloof from Silverstream. (So far I have found no evidence of this track)
Click HERE for story on donkey trail
Sas De Kok had three children, Saes, Lucas, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the youngest, was born at Silverstream Farm in 1929, and lived there until she was 12, when the family moved to Theewaterskloof.
Elizabeth, (now aged 72 and living at Grabouw) has fond memories of childhood on Silverstream. Sas had made a dam on the stream and used furrows to irrigate a small section of land (clearly demarked in the 1942 aerial photo ) in front of the house. They grew vegetables and had lots of fruit trees, mealie meal was supplied by Lotter and Sas was allowed to kill some of the sheep for meat.
Elizabeth attended boarding school in Villiersdorp as it was too far to commute on foot on a daily basis, however she would walk home to the farm on some weekends and spend school holidays at the farm.
At the bottom of the Wolfieskloof was a small hydro electric plant which supplied Villiersdorp with electric power in 1930. The path started here. The donkey track up the Kloof was dangerous, narrow, and hard going for the small girl and her brothers. On a hot day her brothers would insist that they stop halfway for a rest.
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Story has it that De Kok was not past trying to steal some of the sheep, perhaps to sell on the other side of the mountain in Worcester. In those days the numbers of sheep decreased through leopard attacks and De Kok would have killed a few for his own consumption. When Hennie Lotter sent a flock of 871 sheep up the mountain, one season, only 700 returned.
The shortfall was suspicious so urged on by his wife, Annie, Lotter dispatched his sons up to Silverstream to investigate, where they found some sheep hidden in a kraal further down the valley.
1947-1972
Mr H.C.Lotter died in 1960 and the land passed to his two sons ,who in turn sold to Mr Walter Powrie on 7th July 1972.
In the meantime the once productive little farm had become a ruin. Heavy rains on the mountains washed away the tracks, the furrows, and the dam. A fire through the valley killed all the fruit trees and the fynbos and natural vegetation reclaimed the farm.
Over this period the farm was used for occasional hunting trips by the Lotter family. Over the years many leopards were trapped and killed on the farm. One of Lotter’s sons shot a leopard at Silverstream in 1962.
Being such a remote area ,there are probably still a few left up in the mountains.
A magnificent leopard skin adorns the farmstead at De Vleis, Caledon, home of H.C.Lotter’s grandson, Hennie.
On a camping trip to Silverstream in the 1980’s, Fiona Powrie’s camp site was visited by a leopard and leopard spats were found by a researcher on a neighbouring farm in 2000.
1972-1976
Walter Powrie is today a retired engineer, and was responsible for building a dam at Boskloof farm, on the SE border of Silverstream, in the late 1960’s.
Lotter’s sons had by now decided to sell Silverstream but could not find a buyer.
The owner of Boskloof farm, Adv Beukes, had expressed an interest in Silverstream with a view to starting an orchard on the flat area in the centre of Silverstream. With Lotter’s agreement, Beukes, who was confined to a wheelchair, caused a contour track to be bulldozed from Boskloof across Silverstream so that he could drive there and check the soil for himself, and if it was suitable for an orchard, he was prepared to buy the farm from Lotter.
As it turned out, the ground was not suitable and the purchase was declined. The bulldozed track has never been used again and nature is slowly reclaiming the land. The remains of the contoured track, however, provide a lovely walk across the farm. A number of rare proteas have re-established themselves in the centre of the track.
Walter, who was working on the dam at the time, heard of these negotiations. His wife Elizabeth, a botanist, was passionate about the mountains and the flora. He therefore decided to purchase the land for her, the price having come down as the land was deemed simply a piece of mountain land unsuitable for any type of farming.
The Powrie family only visited Silverstream occasionally, camping there .
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They used the route across the farms to the north to the old Silverstream farmstead, but the tracks up the mountain were very rough in parts . They carried mats to put down on bad parts of the road and frequently had to push their combi to help it up the steep bends.
1976-2001
In 1976 Elizabeth Powrie died. The family placed the land she loved in a Trust - (The EZ Powrie Trust) and ownership of Silverstream still rests in this trust.
Perhaps influenced by her mother, Walter’s daughter, Fiona studied botany and before starting her own nursery she worked for The SA National Botanical Gardens in Kirstenbosch.
The value of Silverstream as a natural area of prime importance in the Cape Flora now became recognised, and the policy of the Trustees of Silverstream is that the land be preserved in its natural state.
Ken Thomas 2001