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History: Above Hof Street, just behind Leeuwenhof, the official residence of the Administrator of the Cape, there is an interesting little group of buildings known as Botuin. It consists of a gabled house, a long building at right angles to it and high garden wall enclosing a courtyard. It was originally a part of the Leeuwenhof estate and was built in about 1820 by Johannes Zorn who owned it then. The house was occupied by the farm manager and the long building was the slave quarters and the stables.
In 1848 Petrus Kotzé, the father of Sir John Kotzé, bought the Leeuwenhof estate. which then measured 80 hectares. He did not occupy the main dwelling at once, but lived in this house, then called “The Grove”. The Kotzé family eventually moved into Leeuwenhof in 1855 and “The Grove” was let to William Byron Sampson, while the slave quarters and stables were converted into a dwelling and let to a German botanist called Werner. These buildings served as hired houses for many years until 1952 when Judge H. S. van Zyl, then the Chairman of the Historical Monuments Commission, bought them with the specific object of preserving their architectural character. The property then became known as Botuin.
According to Dr. Barry Biermann, Leeuwenhof, Botuin and the adjoining coachman’s house constitute “the most striking example of the transition from the Dutch neo-classical to the English (style of architecture)”.
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