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History: The road from Stellenbosch to Malmesbury crosses the national road from Cape Town to Paarl by an overhead bridge about 40 kilometres from Cape Town. Not far away, in the northern angle of these two roads, amongst some trees, stands the old Cape Dutch house of the farm Joostenberg.
Joostenberg is one of the oldest farms in that vicinity. It was granted to Matthys Michaels, a Swede from Stockholm, in 1694. Michaels developed a farmstead and built a typical little elongated house with three rooms. In 1752 it was bought by a wealthy man, Gerrit van der Byl of Vredenburg, Stellenbosch. He altered the house to give it its present shape of a T and increased its size by adding the rooms on the north-east side and the stem of the T at the back. The house is built of stone which gives it both sturdiness and an attractive simplicity.
Joostenberg is not only old and typical of a particular form of Cape Dutch architecture, but the front gable gives it a special distinctiveness. The gable bears the date 1756, so Gerrit van der Byl must have been responsible for building it. This date makes it one of the two oldest gables in the Western Province, but it is its form that makes it unique. It is a three-lobed gable, the predecessor of the concavo-convex or “holbol” form and the only surviving example of this form.
Like most other old houses, Joostenberg has under gone alterations during the two centuries of its existeuce, but the present owner, Mr. P. A. Myburgh, has recently restored it with great sympathy and sensitivity.
Proclaimed 1964"
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