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History: There are other exceptional buildings round the Braak; one of the most striking of them is the Burgher House with its fine early pilastered front. It dates to the end of the eighteenth century and is one of several houses built by Anthonie Fick. Fick acquired the land in 1796 or just before that date, and by the following year this house had already been built. In the course of time several alterations were certainly made to the building, but it was originally built in the form of an H and the dis tinctive brick and plaster architrave above the front door had survived.
Anthonie Fick died in 1808, and in 1815 Ryno Johannes van der Riet, the Landdrost of Stellenbosch, bought it for the benefit of his sister-in-law, the wife of J. H. Pierneef, P. A. van der Riet. She lived in it and built a wagon house on the south side of it as well as an outhouse. In 1821 the outhouse was extended eastwards to end in a concavo-convex gable.
In the late 1830’s the Rhenish Missionary Society took over the work of the Stellenbosch Co-operative Missionary Society amongst the coloured people and slaves at Stellenbosch. The Rev. P. D. Luckhoff, the Rhenish missionary, had been working there since 1831, and in 1839 the Burgher House was transferred to him. It remained the parsonage of this highly-respected evange list, the ancestor of the Luckhoff family in South Africa, for forty years. Mr. Luckhoff retired in 1878, and in the following year the Rhenish Missionary Society bought the house from him for continued use as a parsonage. It remained the property of the Society for many years, but it was eventually occupied by a number of coloured families. In 1952 it was acquired by the government and in 1959 it was presented to the Municipality of Stellenbosch. It was then most carefully restored but the so-called Van der Riet house was destroyed in the process. At present the Burgher House serves as head office of Historical Homes of South Africa Ltd. At the same time it houses a tasteful little museum of antiques collected and maintained by the Rembrandt Group.
Proclaimed 1961"
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Construction Date: 1797
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