From 1868 to 1870, before she wrote The Story of an African Farm, young Olive Schreiner lived in a brakdak-style Karoo house in Cradock with her siblings Theo, Ettie and Will. 

More than 100 years later, the house was in danger of falling into ruin.

In the mid-1980s an insurance company bought the building and asked experts to help restore the house to what it would have looked like a century before, when the Schreiners lived there. 

The house, now a national monument, was later donated to the South African Museum of Literature (Amazwi, formerly the National English Language Museum).

One of the local restoration experts was a farmer’s wife, Sandra Antrobus of Longacre Farm. She had set about repairing and furnishing the 1794 farmhouse with period antiques. Then she helped restore Doornhoek farmhouse, now part of the Mountain Zebra National Park’s accommodation offerings. 

Sandra (centre) and her two daughters, Cherie (left) and Lisa. (Photo: Chris Marais)

Escutcheons and architraves

Self-taught and passionate, Sandra had by then become a home-grown expert on Karoo building styles, their escutcheons, bull-nosed verandah roofs, shutters and architraves. She was a regular at auctions and antique shops around the heritage-rich Eastern Cape.

“While I was working on the Schreiner House in Cross Street, I would drive there via Market Street, and I itched to restore all those other old cottages.”

Most of the residences in Market Street were built in the 1850s and had once belonged to artisans who made and fixed wagons, wheels, whips and harnesses. As time passed, schoolteachers and bank managers moved in. It was a thriving and interesting part of town but sank into a spiral of neglect for decades after the national railway system and the motor car replaced horses and ox wagons.

Some of the houses are typical Karoo Brakdak houses, with flat roofs. (Photo: Chris Marais)

An African dream

Sandra bought one old house for a song, then another and another, restoring them with no precise goal in mind. But things became much clearer when a rather avant-garde movie was filmed in Cradock. Released in 1987, An African Dream starred John Kani and was about friendship and relationships across colour lines. 

By then Sandra had renovated the first cottage on Market Street and called it Victoria House. But it wasn’t nearly enough for the 50 people who made up the film crew and actors. 

“I hired and furnished houses for them all over town. It was a tremendous injection of income into Cradock.”

The film had the effect of making Sandra think bigger. She and her daughter Cherie worked side by side, renovating more houses, accommodating and feeding tourists. 

The Jackman touch

In the early 1990s, Sandra’s Tuishuise received an unexpected boost. Writer Tony Jackman recounts that he and his wife Diane plotted an alternate route between KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town for a feature in a travel magazine.

“For the Cradock stop we had booked into the Tuishuise, about which we knew nothing. We stayed in Opstal, one of just six houses then. We were infatuated with it and I raved about it in the article. Seventeen years later we retraced the route and booked in again.

“A lady in a red coat came over and said she’d been waiting for nearly 20 years to thank us.”

Sandra still insists that after the Jackman article, the Tuishuise never looked back.

The magic street

Today, the Tuishuise complex embraces about 30 houses and cottages, an entire preserved streetscape unique in South Africa. Each house is like an authentic Karoo home, and just as welcoming. 

Few truly appreciate how much dedication to detail this took. 

Many of the houses had been clumsily modernised over the years, several sporting inappropriate metal-frame windows. These had to be replaced with original sash windows – more than 100 of them – along with about 50 Cross-and-Bible doors. Each house is furnished with authentic antiques (but also modern bathrooms).

The Victoria Manor Hotel at the end of the road, built in 1848, was one of South Africa’s first hotels. By the early 1990s, it had degenerated into a bit of a dive until Sandra bought it in 1994. She really only wanted the kitchen and dining room section. But she couldn’t resist fixing up the rooms, one by one.

Her youngest daughter Lisa, and her husband Dave Ker, signed up with the business in 2004, handling the marketing, staff and administration respectively. Cherie also rejoined a few years later, taking charge of the kitchens and bar.

A family affair

“So it is a real family enterprise of old-fashioned Karoo values, hospitality and heritage,” says Sandra. “We know we can trust one another.”

The Tuishuise and Victoria Manor Hotel support more than 40 staff – a major job creator for a small town like Cradock. Some of them have been here for more than 20 years. 

“For every guest at all times, there is a friendly smile, a helpful touch, and time to chat. This is the real magic of our hotel,” says Lisa.

Few people of any age could keep up with Sandra. By 8.30am, while guests are having breakfast, Sandra is walking up and down the street, checking what needs to be done after having a quick chat with night porter Vernon Douglas.

Vernon Douglas is the night porter and ‘the guy who keeps an eye on everything’. (Photo: Chris Marais)

The team in the street

A complex of buildings more than 160 years old needs plenty of maintenance, and Sandra has hired a semi-permanent team of handymen. 

They know the fickle ways of Victorian houses with their sun-baked bricks, wooden floors and high ceilings. You’ll often see them on the street with Sandra, fixing sash windows and shutters, the wooden decorative trim on candy-striped verandah roofs, hunting down rain leaks, clearing gutters and making sure all the lights work. 

The latest project has been installing solar panels on the hotel roof.

Practically every one of the 30 houses has a pretty little garden, many of them with rambling heritage roses, first brought across as rootstock by 1820 Settlers. 

On the bucket list

In the afternoon, the famous Amos Nteta comes on shift. Amos is Sandra’s right-hand man, filling multiple roles. The Antrobus family often say he’s at the heart of this place.

Maitre d’Hotel Amos Nteta checking on the night’s guests with Sandra. (Photo: Chris Marais)

In the afternoon, Sandra is usually sitting in her favourite chair in the reception area, welcoming arriving guests in person, going over the rooming list and having intermittent meetings with Lisa, Cherie and Dave.

Sandra’s only concession to the passing years is that she seldom comes in at night nowadays, gratefully handing over to Amos and the next shift. 

But she is still the defender-in-chief of Cradock’s architectural heritage, knowing first-hand how it can generate jobs and income.

The Tuishuise have become Cradock’s most recognisable tourism and heritage asset, along with the Great Fish River, the Mountain Zebra National Park, the gorgeous Moederkerk, and, of course, the Schreiner House Museum. DM

This is an extract from Moving to the Platteland: Life in Small Town South Africa, by Julienne du Toit and Chris Marais. For an insider’s view on semigration in South Africa and touring the Karoo Heartland, get the two-book special of Moving to the Platteland and Roadtripper: Eastern Cape Karoo for only R520, including courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at [email protected]