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Date: c.1740 : late C19 : early C21 Type: Farmhouse Style: Cape Dutch Status: Extant   Click to view large map Coordinates: 33°56'31.71" S 18°28'29.28" E Alt: 10m

Westoe started as part of Coornhoop. It became the property of François Pieter de Necker. He was presumably the man who turned a pre-existing T-shaped homestead (built c1740?) into an H-shaped house now called Westoe (a late-19th-century name). It preserves much of its interior woodwork, but it had lost its gables and had been much altered. It has since been restored, in the process of which circumstantial evidence and guesswork played an unavoidable part. It was given a holbol gable with convex mouldings in-curving at the bottom, a mid-18th-century shape popular in the Netherlands and also in Curaçao (a former Dutch colony), but seldom seen at the Cape. The rudimentary gable of Government House is the only extant example of it here. [Oberholster pp41-42. Kench p117.] (Extracted from Fransen 2004:93). (See also Wrensch House). References: Fransen, Hans. 2004. The old buildings of the Cape. A survey of extant architecture from before c1910 in the area of Cape Town - Calvinia - Colesberg - Uitenhage. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers. pg 93 Goldblatt, David, Courtney-Clarke, Margaret & Kench, John. 1981. Cape Dutch Homesteads. Cape Town: C Struik Publishers. pg 117-128 + ills Hislop, Jim. 2014. Wheatfields & windmills : the old homesteads and farms of Observatory and surrounds : Cape Town. Cape Town: Unidentified. pg 32-37 Oberholster, JJ. 1972. The Historical Monuments of South Africa. Cape Town: Rembrandt Van Rijn Foundation for Culture at the request of the National Monuments Council. pg 41-42 Simons, Phillida Brooke . 1987. Kaaps-Hollandse Huise . Cape Town: Struik. pg 31-32