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History: Sometime during the seventeenth century the Leghoya or Ghoya entered the Orange Free State from the north-west and settled on the hills along the Sand, Vals, Renoster and Wilge Rivers and their their tributaries. Here they built stone kraals with characteristic beehive shaped huts; their ruins today occur as interesting archaeological remains over a large part of the northern and north-western Orange Free State and Southern Transvaal.
The remarkable little corbelled stone huts that these early Bantu people lived in are of particular interest. The walls were built of stones packed without any mortar in such a manner that successive courses overlapped inwards until the opening at the apex was small enough to be closed by a single large slab. For obvious reasons, the huts were generally small. Few of them exceeded an internal diameter of 1,5 m, and the height from floor to apex of the roof was barely 1,2 m. The only opening was the entrance at ground level usually about 45 cm high and 40 cm wide, so that it was necessary to enter the structure by crawling on one’s stomach.
The lay-out and arrangement of the kraals is also of great interest. They were, of course, of various sizes, some of them embodied only a few enclosures, while others covered areas of up to five hectares. Isolated huts occasionally stand free from other structures, but in most cases they form part of a complex consisting of a circular cattle kraal with up to three huts built into the wall. Each such complex clearly formed the home of a family with its cattle. In many cases the whole kraal was surrounded by a wall or the inter-linked walls of complexes constituted a surrounding wall.
Excavations in kraals and especially in middens associated with them have revealed sherds of handmade pottery, assegai and arrow-points of wrought-iron, large querns and coloured trade beads imported from Europe. Native traditions support the conclusion that many of the kraals were still being built two hundred years ago. At any rate, it is known that Makwana, from whom the Voortrekker leader, Andries Potgieter, bought the northern Orange Free State for about forty cattle, was still living in a kraal of this kind.
Most of these kraals are easily accessible. For example, extensive ruins lie on the hill on either side of the national road just south of the Sand River. Their very accessibility has exposed them all the more to destruction. Farmers have removed stones from them to build kraals and sheds of their own, and for this reason the Historical Monuments Commission has felt it essential to protect a few of the examples by proclaiming them as monuments.
Several examples of these corbelled huts have been proclaimed. Those on the farm Doornberg now lie within the Willem Pretorius game reserve. Another group on the farm Sedan, about 13 kilometres west of Lindley, include some of the best-preserved examples. On the hill known as Vegkop in the Heilbron district a number of such huts are included in the area of the Vegkop Battlefield.
Proclaimed 1950 and 1962"
Visual Description: The terrain contains remainings of a settlement from the early sotho. It consists out of rock
Colours:
Site Features:
Condition: Poor
Construction Date: 1950-06-30
Materials: Other: Rocks
Catalogue: , No: Nil, Significance Category: