History
The history and heritage behind Welmoed
Background:
The original farm was given to Henning Hussing, a German speaking Swiss mercenary by the VOC as a land grant upon completion of his contractual tour of duty in the Cape. He named it Meer Lusthof (German for idyllic farm by the sea – now Meerlust); describing the sense of pleasure he obtained from the sea breezes that blew inland from False Bay.
Hussing took a portion of his enormous farm and gave / sold it to Jacobus van der Heyden, also a mercenary and to whom he was related. This portion later became known as Welmoed.
Simon van der Stel
(October 14, 1639 – June 24, 1712) was the first Governor of the Cape of Good Hope.
He arrived in the Cape in 1679. He was forty years old, well educated, widely travelled and related by marriage to a director of the VOC. As commander at the Cape he quickly developed ambitious plans for the expansion of the colony.
Survey teams and geologists were sent out and he surveyed for himself the fertile mountain slopes beyond the Cape Flats. One night he camped among bushes on an island in the Eerste River. He declared he would build a town along the stream, and name it after his night in the shrubs – “Stellenbosch”. The town was founded in 1680.
The land around the town would be developed for farms, and especially winemaking (wine was required for the ships). Each year he celebrated his birthday with festivities in the elegant, oak lined village he had founded, which is today an attractive town in the wine lands. He later developed farms and settlements at Paarl and Drakenstein on the Berg River.
In 1685 he established the magnificent Groot Constantia wine farm as a model to Dutch farmers. He was a cultured man, dismayed by the poor quality of wine production, and determined to teach the Boers (farmers) by example.
However, soon Simon discovered a better way to improve farming. When King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, providing religious tolerance in France, many Huguenot (protestant) refugees made their way to Holland. Van der Stel asked the VOC to provide passage to the Cape for any with experience of wine farming.
Roughly 200 were shipped over, increasing the population by a third. They were provided with limited supplies and sent out to establish farms, first to the region of Paarl and then to an elephant breeding ground called ‘Oliphantshoek’ that later became known as ‘Franschhoek’.
In 1691 van der Stel was promoted to Governor of the Cape. He retired in 1699. He was so highly esteemed by the VOC that they wished to continue the Van der Stel tradition by appointing his son Willem Adrian van der Stel as Governor. Upon his retirement he developed his estate at Constantia where he died in 1712.
Van der Stel may be regarded as the farther of the South African wine industry.
Willem Adriaan van der Stel
Simon van der Stel’s eldest son, Willem Adriaan van der Stel, succeeded him as Governor. Amongst other things, he developed Vergelegen estate with VOC finances without the knowledge of the Board of Directors (Here XVII) in Holland. He built a house and planted over 500 000 vines, large orchards and corn lands. He stocked the farm with 800 cattle and 10 000 sheep. The fact that he, the governor, had to sanction all purchases of supplies for a visiting fleet of the VOC, allowed him to favour his products before others. This brought him into conflict with other farmers (Vryburghers) like Henning Hussing, Jacobus van der Heyden, Adam Tas and many others.
These farmers were ex mercenaries, and killing was their profession. They used to cross the Hottentots Holland Mountains, raiding the Hottentots of the Overberg, stealing their cattle and sheep and supplying the fleet with these goods.
There was therefore a conflict of interests – the Governor calling the farmers ‘criminals’, which they were, and they naming the Governor ‘a crook’, which he was.
A petition was drafted, signed by 63 of the 550 Cape Free Burghers (of these, 31 were French Huguenots) and sent directly to the Board of Directors of the VOC headquarters in Amsterdam, requesting that the Governor be replaced.
The petition was rejected. Willem Adriaan had the leaders arrested and issued an ultimatum – either they make out a new declaration to the Board, apologizing, declaring the first a fraud and issuing a second, praising the Governor or he would hang them.
The rebels quickly agreed, all except Jacobus van der Heyden, who replied: ‘Hang and be damned! I will not change anything that I wrote about you.’
Whereupon the Governor had him imprisoned in the dungeons of the Castle. The cell can be seen to this day.
As time went by, the doctor (sieke trooster) warned the Governor that van der Heyden’s health was deteriorating and if he did not release him, he would most certainly die, and would result in the ‘Vryburghers” having a martyr to fire their rebellion. Others would join their cause, which would have definite repercussions in Holland.
And so, Willem Adriaan van der Stel released van der Heyden; whereupon the population said in Dutch: "Deze vent heeft wel moed" which translated means "This chap does have courage".
Welmoed
History does not tell us at what stage this portion of Meerlust was officially changed to Welmoed, but common cause was that the local people referred to the place where the man lived who had courage, whereas this co-conspirators had backed down. This is the most likely and correct way in which the name originated.
This episode eventually led to his recall to Holland in April 1707 and confiscation of his estate. The Dutch East India Company, which had reached the high point of its power during the governorships of the van der Stels, began its decline, chiefly because of English and French competition in the eastern markets.
Subsequent History
The second owners were the van der Byl’s. They were great builders and the old cellar, the graveyard and quite a few of the buildings were built by them.
Now enter the Kramer family. Mr Kramer, an extremely wealthy Jewish gentleman, owned the United Tobacco Company of SA and had large financial interests in The Castle Wine & Brandy Company. The house Mr. Kramer built and lived in eventually became the Glen Eagles Hotel, and much later Die Drie Gewels Hotel.
Kramer, who owned Welmoed, bought up the grapes from local farmers and converted them into distilling wine. At this stage, the market was on the reef, where the miners drank spirits. Very little wine was produced due to its easy spoilage in a warm climate.
With his son interested in breeding race horses and Castle Wine still requiring distilling wine, the Kramer’s offered some land, the cellar and some buildings of Welmoed to the producer farmers, in order that they may establish a Wine Co-operative on the lines of Helderberg Co-op.
The balance of the land, between Eerste River and the tarred road, which the Co-op did not purchase, was sold to a Mr Paetzold, an immigrant who originally came from the border between France & Germany. He, together with his son, established a nursery called Rosarium.
The first winemaker, Manie Ackerman (‘Manie met die baie kinders’). He continued to produce distilling wine, and it was left to Joe Forrer, an outstanding (German South African) winemaker to reduce the distilling wine and to go in for natural white wines.
The famous Welmoed gables
Two of the Cape Dutch gables combine the neoclassical and Baroque styles; the other is in the florid Baroque style. Click here for sketches of the various gables at Welmoed: https://www.up.ac.za/dspace/handle/2263/7436
For more information on Cape Dutch architecture, visit http://www.wineroute.co.za/architecture.asp.