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Government House
Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal

Arthur Edgar DAINTON: Architect 1901

Date:1832 : 1901
Type:Homestead
Style:Victorian : Cottage orné
Status:Extant
Street:1 Langalibalele Street

 


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Coordinates:
29°36'35.95" S 30°22'12.96" E Alt: 670m

Government House is a romantic-looking building with little of the formality usually associated with official residences. It was designed in the style of the Cottage orné, an English influence much favoured in Pietermaritzburg during the mid-19th century. For the most part Government House is built of neat but irregular stonework, with quoinings of cut stone. The many-gabled roof has richly coloured fish-scaled tiles edged with white-painted fretwork bargeboarding. At the front entrance the stoep enlarges into a gabled porch, which stretches across the driveway so that carriages might draw up for shelter.

(Picton-Seymour, 1989: 139)

The building was declared a National Monument and is now a Provincial Heritage Site.

See also Restoration of Government House on Portfolio Property Investments.

Now part of the UNISA campus.


Books that reference Government House

Hillebrand, Melanie. 1975. Aspects of architecture in Natal, 1880-1914. Pietermaritzburg: Unpublished MA. Dept Fine Art and History of Art, University of Natal. pg 167
Picton-Seymour, Désirée. 1989. Historical Buildings in South Africa. Cape Town: Struikhof Publishers. pg 139