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History: Settled in 1695 by a German, Hans Hendrik Hattingh (Burman J, Waters of the Western Cape)

In 1695 the land was granted to a German named Hans Hendrik Hattingh. In 1709, he sold the land to Pierre Joubert, a Huguenot who arrived at the Cape in 1688 with his wife, lsabeau (or Elisabeth) Richarde. Something of an entrepreneur, Joubert already owned several farms in the Franschhoek area and this one decided to call after La Motte d'Aigues, a part of France that had once been his home. When he diec in 1732, his wife sold the farm to Hendrik Hop who, twenty years later, trans ferred it to one Gabriel du Toit. It was Du Toit who built the original T-shaped farmhouse which, many years later, was incorporated in the present homestead. According to the inventory drawn up after Du Toit's death in 1794, he was enterprising, hard-working and wealthy. Among other things, during his ownership he increased the 4000 vines he had originally planted to 25 000 and was able to provide generously for each of his 14 children. Gerhardus Johannes du Toit, his tenth child, bought the part of the farm on which Gabriel had built the house. In 1815, La Motte returned into the possession of the Joubert family when it was bought by Gideon Jacobus Joubert, great-great- grandson of the original Pierre, its owner more than a century before. Gideon developed the farm considerably and, in 1825, added a new gable to the old wine cellar that had been built by Gabriel du Toit.
Visual Description: In 1815 the remainder was acquired by Gideon Jacobus Joubert and as the next transfer is dated 1858, this man must have built the wine cellar, or added a centre gable to it, dated 1825. He also added a very similar gable to the house in 1836 (which bears his initials GJJBT). It has a small pediment and a wavy outline terminating in inverted scrolls; the inner pilasters are only half height and support a kind of simple architrave above the gable window, which is a replica of that above the front door. The end-gables, with pointed caps, are probably contemporary with the front gable. The homestead is T-shaped, and clearly much older than the gable; circumstantial evidence points to Gabriel du Toit as the builder and to a date fairly early in his ownership - probably during the 1750' s. The front facade is delightful, with its small-paned shuttered casements (2 single and 2 double ones) and its horizontally divided front door. The latter has a roughly square fanlight and a transom that does not line up with the heads of the windows; it is flanked by plain plaster pilasters painted green like the woodwork, but clearly a later addition. The back of the house, unfortunately, is not of the same quality as the front: it suffers from the introduction of steel windows. The water-mill nearby reputedly dates from 1721, but its works have largely disappeared. The mill machinery now there comes from Matjiesrivier, Ceres. Not far from the homestead lies an old cemetery dating back to c.1760 although some headstones bear earlier dates and may have been brought from elsewhere. The cemetery is a National Monument. Oberholster: p84-5. A little distance away, near the main road, stands a late house with a rectangular, 2-room-deep plan and a square gable with broad pediment with fairly heavy mouldings. It is dated 1860 and bears the initials JSJB - possibly those of a son of Gideon Jacobus Joubert.
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