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Morgenster - Morning Star
Somerset West, Western Cape
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Click to view large map Coordinates: | The nucleus of this farm consisted of the third of the four parts into which Vergelegen was divided after the recall of Willem Adriaan van der Stel; it was bought by Jacques Malan. Malan's daughter married Willem Morkel of Onverwacht and their son, Philip Hendrik Morkel, in 1825 got a regrant of Morgenster (the name was first recorded in 1739, and must have been given by Jacques Malan). Both the homestead on Morgenster and its complex of outbuildings are among the finest in the Cape. The house is H-shaped with six really perfect gables; the front-gable (recently well re-built) is dated 1786 and was perhaps the work of Catharina's second husband Rudolph Loubscher. They show the holbol style at its most beautiful, with convex edge-mouldings continued onto the gable face and ending as fully developed scrolls, the cap split into two equally full-blooded scrolls with a scallop between. There are various small decorations on the gable face; small trees in pots, animals, and a small holbol motif. On the back gable the convex curve has become wavy: a foretaste of the general waviness that a few years later was to make the holbol gable lose its sharply define concavo-convex character. The end-gables are beautifully proportioned holbol examples; with two scrolls at the top and a scallop like the front-gable. A room has been added to one of the back wings with a stepped end-gable; it was probably built quite soon after the rest of the house. The windows in front and at the back are the original sash-windows, with the usual half-width ones beside the doors. The front door is early- to mid-19th-century; its fanlight is quite a fine one for its date, and its transom still lines up with that of the windows. The back door has a glazed and sliding upper half, i.e. a 'drop-fan'. The only features that detract from the beauty of the homestead are additions at one side and at the back. The voorhuis retains good wall-painting, as well as a fine stinkwood and yellowwood screen. The homestead was restored by R Fox. The farm has a most unusual werf, completely enclosed, but with the homestead placed asymmetrically in one corner. Three of the outbuildings form a kind of avenue in front of the house, two of them with stepped end-gables and one with a pedimented square centre gable. Another outbuilding, beside the house but obliquely placed, has a gable dated 1779, of the holbol type but with unusually flowing outlines and exquisite plaster decorations; its end-gables are similar. This is said to be the older homestead. If there is any truth in this, it can only be that Morkel and his wife 'camped out' in it until the homestead was finished; it was certainly never built as a house. There are steps to the loft at one of its ends, the flanking wall of which has mouldings along its edge. Behind the homestead there is an old sheep enclosure. [De Bosdari p56; Pearse p45, 155-77; vd Meulen pp36-37, n 120, 203; Obholzer p 180; Heap p54; Brooke Simons p83.] (Extracted from Fransen 2004:249) References:
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