Sites

Archive Import
History: Puntjie is a portion of the farm Kleinfontein. In the course of time fishermen and holidaymakers erected tents and later kapstylhuisies here without the consent of successive owners and often to their considerable annoyance. When Mr. Danie Hoffmann, who was for a long time the Mayor of Bredasdorp, eventually acquired Kleinfontein, he fenced off about four hectares of land and allowed the people of Vermaaklikheid and Brakfontein to build houses there and use them at a nominal rental per annum. Nearly all of them had kapstylhuise built, each with a small cookhouse in the same style. The designer and builder of most of them was Mr. F. J. de Jager of Vermaaklikheid.
These modest little dwellings, the oldest of which was built about fifty years ago, are constructed by a technique which has a history which goes back to 500 A.D. in Europe, where it is known to have had a wide spread distribution from Hungary in the east, through Germany to Spain and Portugal in the west. Indeed, in some of these countries houses of this type are still being used by herdsmen. This technique eventually spread to South Africa.
The trek of the stock-farmer into the interior began early in the eighteenth century, and long before the end of the century the vanguard had reached the distant eastern frontier. At first his house was a covered wagon, but as soon as he established himself in one place for a time, he built shelters for himself. One of the commonest forms of these shelters was the kapstylhuisie which must have been built throughout South Africa.
But these houses gradually disappeared in the course of time, so that now only a few examples, survive in the eastern Orange Free State and in the vicinity of Oudtshoorn, Heidelberg (Cape) and Riversdale. In the Oudtshoorn district they are used mainly as tobacco sheds and coach-houses, while at Vermaaklikheid and Puntjie they still serve as dwellings.

It is obvious that variations of this technique would be applied in various parts of the country at different times. In Natal, for example, low walls of sods plastered with cow-dung and clay were built on either side of the house to support the kapbalke, to protect the living area against draughts and rain and to compensate for the loss of space caused by the sloping walls.
Visual Description: Puntjie is an unintentional open-air museum of nearly seventy kapstylhuise (truss-style houses) or as they are called in that area, hartbeeshuisies

The Kapstylhuis, as its name suggests, consists solely of a roof carried on a series of about eight couples or kapbalke and reaching right down to the ground. In its simplest form it has no walls and is in fact nothing more than the thatched roof of a Cape house built at ground level. Eight or more pairs of poles, meeting at the top, are spaced at regular intervals to cover a floor space measuring about 8 metres by 5 metres. Each pair is joined together by a tie-beam, hanebalk, all pegged together with wooden pegs, and across these couples are secured the battens to which the bundles of reeds and thatch are sewn with riempies, twine or grass rope.
In some cases an additional member, a windlat stretching diagonally from front to back, was added to give more stability. The ridge was smeared with a mixture of cow-dung and sand which in later days, was coated with tar to render it more watertight. The floor was of ant-heap, smeared and made to shine by continued application of linseed oil or ox blood polished with a smooth stone.
The ends are rounded and at one end is a recessed entrance closed by halved doors. Illumination is provided by two small window openings, one in the end opposite the entrance and one on the side, which can be closed with wooden shutters.
The interior of the Kapstylhuis was divided into a living room and a bedroom by a simple partition. Cooking was done outside on an open-fire protected by a reed screen.
Colours:
Site Features:
Condition:
Construction Date:
Materials:
Catalogue: , No: , Significance Category: