Corbelled buildings of the Great Karoo

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tok-tokkie

Race Dog
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I am writing a ride report about the Sak river.  Along the way I saw a corbelled building and would like to refer to this thread (which I originally posted elsewhere on a closed site).

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Antonia & I went up to Loxton where a friend of ours, Pat, is doing research on corbelled houses for her MA.  We went by car because I am busy working on my Dakar and did not get it finished in time.  We went up on a Wednesday and came back on the following Tuesday.  Pat has a list of 80 corbelled houses in the area and has visited about 20 of them so far.  She goes and talks to the owners to see what they know about them, sketches them, measures them and her husband, John, photographs them.  Antonia & I did the measuring for her as our contribution.  There were some other friends from the Vernacular Architecture Society also helping.  In particular Celeste as she comes from the area and knows many of the owners of the buildings so she could phone and make the appointments before we went (Pat never goes without first making contact with the owners).

We went on a trip to France a few years ago.  My surname is Malan so we went to Provence where they originated and did a three day walk.  We went to see the corbelled village of Borries because there are also such buildings in the Karoo.  I wrote up about that village but I will add that posting after I have shown the Karoo ones.

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That is Antonia and her elder sister Sarah.

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This is the first one we went to see.  The driver of the tractor lives in it.  Most of the others we visited were unoccupied.  In fact many of the farmhouses are also unoccupied.  What is happening is the successful farmers are buying up the farms as they become available.  Several of the corbelled houses belong to one farmer who owns all the farms in a 22km stretch towards Williston from Loxton.  This one has been plastered outside which makes it more wind & waterproof.

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I am a Bishops old boy so was pleased to see the tractor driver seems to have also gone there as he has the blazer proudly hung up in his house.

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This one has also been plastered.  The stones that stick out are for laying planks on when building it – scaffolding.
 
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