Sites

When the Edward Davidson ('Gabbo' to the family) came to the farm after the Anglo- Boer (South  African) War he initially lived in a rondavel on the northern side of the main dirt road that crosses the farm east to west. When he wed the god-child and niece of Edith Anne Fawcett, Mary  Elizabeth Fawcett ('Molly' to the family) their first home was a rectangular thatched mud brick and  clay-plastered cottage here. This later became the first trading store when the main house was  built in 1910, later a store-room, particularly for wooden coffins when the larger store and postal  agency was built. All are ruinous and only foundations remain. The second AE Davison Memorial School now stands proximate to the site. 

The farm house, built as the family home for the newly married couple Ted and Molly Davidson in  1910, follows what had become a Transvaal vernacular style, having the same planning principles of  the earlier then extant homestead of the 'Aunts' located to the west of the farm, built on the  ruins of an earlier pre-war [Anglo Boer/ South African War] Boer dwelling. While the other was  thatched, this is roofed in corrugated iron. It was the last of a sequence of dwellings, the first  being a rondavel, the second a small cottage for the newly-wed couple. The planning is typical with  quartered square floor plan bisected by a walk through pantry, some of the rooms inter-leading but  also all opening to the cat-slide verandah to four sides. The main house is under the typical  pyramid roof. The substructure is of sundried mud bricks, with smeared clay in the fashion of the  indigenes, and maintained in this fashion by Onica Mosima, the resident domestic worker, and her  assistants and children, to this day. Windows and doors are of timber, and as with the roof sheeting, door and window furniture and fittings are imported, as is typical of the era, but in places the folk practices prevail, such as turnbuckle catches, curtained corner cupboards and suchlike. A fireplace is centrally located between living room and main bedroom so while opening directly to the living area, shares heat with the bedroom behind. It penetrates the roof at the ridge. Unusual is the canted ceiling over the living room with main tie beams exposed. The stoep once had a post and stickwork exterior support but this has been disguised by columns of local rough-cleaved sandstone bedded in sand-cement mortar, which is also used for 'crazy-paving' flags on the stoep. Typical of the period, the house is orientated with main living areas to the south, and a free standing kitchen and dairy room to the north. These were typically separated from the main house because of the dangers of fire and to have the activities of servants remote from the occupants of the house. In time two 'stoepkamers' were inserted to the north east and north west of the verandah, being used as a library/study and spare bedroom respectively. Planning can be understood as a climatic response where the volume of the roof kept the living areas cool and the stoep the mass of the building and openings shaded. The pantry at the centre was the most protected from temperature extremes.