Karoo Art Hotel turns forgotten guesthouse into playground of art, travel and mischief

There’s something very positive happening in the Karoo.

People of means have begun investing in the hospitality industry, with an eye to the long game. They’re not looking for immediate returns on their investments. They’re ploughing money, passion and innovations into towns badly in need of new ideas and go-forward projects.

You see this welcome trend in many previously forlorn settlements, which have suffered from out-migration in past decades. Someone’s fixing old Victorian-era homes in Murraysburg, someone else is tarting up a guest house in Richmond, another angel investor is rescuing old buildings in Rosendal, a shopping block in Vosburg gets a facelift from an incomer, and everywhere you go in Graaff-Reinet you see renovations and fresh energy in the streets.

The Klein Karoo, in particular, is beginning to experience this small town renaissance. Barrydale, voted by Daily Maverick readers as the best small town to live in (2025), boasts a number of these new projects. Here’s one of them.

Hand-in-glove

Rick and Sue Melvill, current owners of the Karoo Art Hotel in Barrydale along Route 62 in the Western Cape, are a real hand-in-glove couple who have always combined their talents to tackle projects normally undertaken by teams of creative people.

They were at the forefront of an exciting communication concept in the 1990s that they branded Industrial Theatre. It all began with combining show business with product launches at venues like the shiny new Sun City out at Pilanesberg in the old homeland of Bophuthatswana. They called their agency Blue Moon.

In those days Rick was a leading creative in an era where big money was going into razzmatazz product launches and events.

There he had earned himself the nickname of “Cecil B de Melvill” among producers who faced the challenge of pulling off his big ideas in the face of wildly excited clients with budget realities.

Sue, a gifted dancer and performer, is a product of the world-renowned physical theatre school École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. It was the skill learned there that enabled her to tell grand and epic stories.

All things retro

Blue Moon was eventually sold, the couple launched Unplugged Communications and then Melvill & Moon, a safari accessory business that is still in operation.

“I’ve got a passion for this retro stuff,” says Rick. “We wanted to create an Out of Africa-type brand after being inspired by a trip to Kenya. We saw how Australian brands were celebrating the Outback, and realised we could do the same with African safaris.”

And then they found an extraordinary Eastern Free State farm called Prynnsberg Estate. Built in the 1880s by Charles Newberry, a Kimberley diamond mogul, the sandstone mansion on Prynnsberg Estate sported 20 bedrooms, a billiards room, a sprung-floor ballroom and outbuildings that included two churches, a gamekeeper’s lodge, and a clutch of workers’ houses.

It was Lordly England transplanted into Africa by an immigrant carpenter who made his pile on the exciting new diamond fields. Well past its prime now, it seemed to be waiting for the likes of Rick and Sue Melvill for a grand return to glory, the thunder of horses’ hooves on the polo field and devilishly delicious G&Ts sipped slowly as the sinking sun turns the nearby Maluti ranges into gold.

“We actually bought it from the auctioneers,” says Rick. “For a few years we didn’t do much to Prynnsberg, it was just our mad party house.”

The renovations to Prynnsberg were massive, and pretty soon it featured on the cover of Condé Nast International magazine.

“And that was the month we sold it,” says Rick with a rueful grin. “We got an offer we could not turn down.”

Rick and Sue moved to Cape Town, ran a guest house in Kalk Bay and retained their business interests in Melvill & Moon.

Barrydale beckons

“And then, on a motorbike road trip in the Covid-19 year of 2020, I landed up in Barrydale,” says Rick. “We’d been booked into a place that someone in our group had described as a dump.

“Between the time we’d made the booking and our arrival, the hotel had gone out of business. We found it surrounded by razor wire with a liquidation auction banner flapping in the breeze. But they’d opened the razor wire to let us in for the night.

“Executive chef Derek Lowe had been brought back as a freelancer along with a barman, house maid and a sculler, and we had the night of our lives with one of the best lamb meals any of us had ever tasted.”

The next morning Rick phoned Sue with an idea.

“Imagine owning an art hotel somewhere in the Klein Karoo!”

The Melvills got talking to the owner and the hotel ended up in their hands for a reasonable price. However, they knew the real expense was to come.

The big fix

One of the first unwelcome discoveries in the hotel happened when they opened up the ground floor ceiling for renovations and found there had been a major fire at some stage.

“Anyone having a shower upstairs was in real high danger of ending up naked on the floor of Reception below” says Sue. “We replaced the charred wooden beams with steel ones.”

They undertook a renovation process that was akin to restoring a vintage Rolls-Royce: a careful deconstruction followed by a painstaking reassembly to bring back the hotel’s grandeur.

Artists’ haven

The Karoo Art Hotel now hosts events that blend theatre, music and community gatherings, helping to cultivate local talent and attract visitors interested in arts and cultural experiences.

Rick and Sue have a big black dog called Charlie, and the three of them often take people out on short R62 drives in Sputnik, their old Rolls, interviewing them along the way.

The hotel has become a route favourite for the Harley Davidson crowd and fast-car collectors who love the twists, turns and long straights of Route 62.

Down to the bar

I know there’s a room right above the Anna Jordaan Bar, because we stayed there once on a Saturday night a long time ago. And I remember the ruckus from below, and how we couldn’t sleep. So I ask Rick: “Did you sound-proof the room upstairs?”

“No,” he replies. “But we’re planning to install a bell on a chain that will hang above the bar counter below. When the noise level rises too high, the occupants in the room are to ring the bell.”

“And then?”

“Well, then we’ll send a tray of tequila up to the room with a special invitation to join us in the bar.”

Klein Karoo mischief to the core. DM

Klein Karoo Magic (390 pages, full colour) by Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit will be released in mid-May, 2026. To pre-order your author-signed copy (R400 including SA courier service), email Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za