THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF FARMSTEAD ARCHITECTURE IN THE BRANDWATER BASIN OF THE EASTERN FREE STATE UP TO UNION

• Main Author: du Preez, Jacobus Lodewikus
• Other Authors: Prof WH Peters
• Format: Others
• Language: en-uk
• Published: University of the Free State 2012
• Subjects: Architecture
• Online Access: http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-08142012-125013/restricted/

Shelter forms part of the means of maintaining oneself within a landscape. Temporary forms of shelter often develop into a house, as a more permanent form of shelter. Once the house has taken form, it also acts as a sign of a foothold on the landscape from where influence can be furthered. A farmhouse is a part of that tradition but agriculturally based. A farmstead usually includes the most important house on the farm and its associated structures. It forms the centre from where control is exercised over a demarcated part of the landscape, which is the farm. Early farmhouses are therefore associated with a series of ideas like settlement, social interaction, control, ownership, farms, farmsteads, houses and shelter. These ideas are viewed conceptually differently by different cultures. Within a culture the ideas change as time goes by and are influenced on the most basic level by the resources found in the landscape. This study endeavors to collect and document the physical evidence of the early farmhouses in the Brandwater Basin area. It is a vernacular architecture particular to the Eastern Free State, unified by the use of the sandstone that is available on the landscape as building material. The collection is limited to houses built before the end of the Orange River Colony in 1910. The architectural development that followed on the initial structures is also considered. The purpose of this study is to extend knowledge of this critical phase of the development of the area. It is the phase in which a new tradition was introduced to the area, which up to this day forms the basis on which control over the physical landscape is regulated.