A 7km hike around Bathurst village with resident Nick Cowley last Tuesday morning was a welcome active outdoor prelude to the festivities of Christmas. It also offered a glimpse of the lives and cultural practices of early British settlers and soldiers, and an explanation for some of the structures they left behind.
Cowley conducts historical trails through the village to raise funds for the local Historic Bathurst non-profit organisation to maintain and renovate those structures, and to promote heritage tourism as a drawcard for the area.
An enthusiastic group of 16, bolstered by the visiting Joburg Hiking Club – in Port Alfred on their annual Christmas Camp – gathered at the Pig & Whistle Inn.
“The Pig”, as it’s affectionately known by locals, had its beginnings in 1832, next to Thomas Hartley’s house and forge. After he died in 1840, aged 68, his widow Sarah took over the running of the inn. Cowley noted that the venue may hold the record for the longest continuously licensed pub in the country.
Religion, education and the settlers themselves – destitute and with no other option than to take a stand – were the soft front of the colonial project. The tour featured the two churches that were a spiritual and physical refuge for the newly landed families, as well as Bathurst Primary School.
The 1832-built Bathurst Methodist Church, first known as the Wesleyan Chapel, is in York Road, just down the road from the village crossroads and was the first stop. Cowley noted that the church has an active congregation with services every Sunday.
Further up the hill, in Donkin Terrace, is St John’s Anglican Church. If the Methodist Church was the spiritual home of the settler working class, St John’s was where the colony’s higher-ranking soldiers and administrators were seen, Cowley explained. Later in the tour, the group entered the churchyard via the small cemetery, where many of the settlers from the area were buried. Thomas Hartley’s tomb stands prominently outside the church. Inside, holding together the ceiling struts, is metal tempered and shaped in his forge.
Maryna Shepherd, who took over that leg of the tour, shared a wealth of fascinating details about the building’s artefacts, architecture and the fortunes of the people for whom it was – quite literally – their fortress. She told the story of how 600 women and children from Bathurst village and the surrounding farms sheltered in the church when thousands of Xhosa warriors crossed the Fish River on December 21, 1834, the start of the 6th Frontier War. Among them was 18-year-old Elizabeth Hiles.
Some time during the difficult and tedious three-month journey from England to Algoa Bay, young Elizabeth, had fallen in love with an officer from one of the units dispatched to refresh the armed forces in the colony. They were married by the ship’s captain. When she joined the refugees in the church on December 21, she was heavily pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Maria, on Christmas Day.
Tragically, Maria never got to meet her dad because he was killed in an ambush at Trumpeter’s Drift two days later, when he was returning from a trading trip.
Bathurst was the first administrative centre for the settlers of 1820 and other stops during the tour included the official residence of the governor, known as The Residency, the military powder magazine on the hill built by Royal Engineers in 1821, the 1831-built Mathematical and Grammatical School that today operates as Bathurst Primary School and ‘The Lonely Grave’ where 1820 settler Matthew Dold was buried in 1823, before either of the churches and their graveyards were established. His granddaughter Jane Ayliff was buried in the same grave 24 years later.
An interesting insight into the social mores of the settlers was Cowley’s explanation of the purpose of the young women’s seminaries established at colonial hubs. Teaching skills such as deportment and the art of conversation, these institutions were possibly the only available way up and out of hardship and toil for the daughters of settlers: the idea was that they would catch the eye of a relatively well-to-do administrative official or army officer, and the social graces they had learnt would assure them of acceptance in those circles, and the prospect of a “good” marriage.
Most of the tour group were seasoned hikers, whose home range is the 2-billion-year-old Magaliesberg Mountains. But hike leader of the Johannesburg Hiking Club’s Christmas Camp, Sabine Behr, said they they thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the 200-year-old landmarks of Bathurst village: it had been worthwhile and interesting, and a refreshing change from their usual trails.
The last edition of the Bathurst Historical Trails for 2024 takes place at 9am on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2024. Whatsapp or SMS (no phone calls please) 083-413-5050 for more details or meet outside the Pig & Whistle Inn at 9am on Tuesday December 31.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- Wear good walking shoes: there are several shortcut or bail-out options, but if you can stick with the full trail (about 7km) you will discover corners of Bathurst you never knew existed. Ths group were coincidentally members of a hiking club, but you definitely don’t have to be an experienced hiker to enjoy the Bathurst Historical Trail: the pace is easy, the terrain gentle and your guide kind and patient.
- Wear sunscreen and a hat: the South African Weather Service forecasts clear skies with temperatures in the high 20s for New Year’s Eve.
- Take water to drink: it’s only about two hours in total but if there’s no breeze, it could get really hot.
- Enjoy a meal and/ or something to drink at one of Bathurst’s many excellent eateries (and drinkeries) afterwards.
- Browse and buy lots of art and books in wonderful (and cool!) nooks and crannies of the village after that. And don’t forget to visit the Bathurst Agricultural Museum, now incorporating the relocated Kowie Museum.
HERE’S A GALLERY FEATURING SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TOUR:
OPINION
A tour of the village by someone who knows it as well as Nick does is well worth the time: he’s a great guide. Knowing your R50 will go towards maintaining heritage artefacts means your money is going towards a valuable asset in an area whose economy is heavily dependent on tourism.
The tours are conducted by volunteers who are already giving their time and knowledge for the greater good, with no remuneration. Which is more than most of us achieve. So what comes next is emphatically not a criticism but an observation.
Just through the bushes from the furthest site of interest that we visited, the ‘lonely grave’, and also on the commonage, is the site where just a week prior, the hand-built huts of young boys undergoing the Xhosa practice of ulwaluko were burnt ceremonially as a prelude to their homecoming as abakhwetha.
Steps already taken towards completing and integrating the historical narrative of the area include the installation of isivivane at the Bathurst toposcope that acknowledge Xhosa leaders central to the area’s history.
Imagine how powerful it would be if, alongside stories of the British settlers’ resourcefulness and cultural practices, heritage tourists could also understand where and how the area’s earlier inhabitants conducted their lives, and understand how the decades of conflict affected them.
With cultural tourism being the next big thing, there’s a gap for collaborations that could deepen and broaden this valuable and worthwhile initiative of Historic Bathurst. Those collaborations could also solve the hard-working NPO’s challenge of attracting a younger active membership.
