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Smuts House
Doornkloof, Irene, Gauteng

Date:1908
Type:Homestead
Status:Extant

 


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Coordinates:
25°53'18.16" S 28°13'54.32" E Alt: 1461m

In 1908 General Smuts built this house known as the Big House. The wood-and-iron building is of historical interest as it was originally a campaign building in India, demounted and re-erected as an officers' mess at Lord Kitchener's headquarters at Middelburg (Mpumalanga) during the Anglo-Boer War.

After the war, Smuts, when he acquired the farm Dooringkloof, purchased the structure and had it again demounted and re-erected there, somewhat reconfigured in layout. Over the years, rooms were added and verandahs enclosed. It is a large house with 11 bedrooms. As Field Marshall, the Right Honourable Jan Christiaan Smuts, second Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa and a prominent figure in world affairs, lived in this house for a considerable part of his adult life. It was the only permanent home he knew after he left his father's farm, Bovenplaats.

(Richardson, 2001: 206)

The house is now a museum with a Tea Garden serving teas and light meals and there is Village Market on the second and last Saturday of each month.

There is a magnolia tree in the garden with a plaque which reads:

THE SEED FROM WHICH
THIS MAGNOLIA TREE GREW
WAS SENT IN 1911 FROM
ROME TO MRS SMUTS BY
EMILY HOBHOUSE
_________________

DIE SAAD WAARVAN HIERDIE
MAGNOLIABIIM GEGROEI HET
IS IN 1911 VAN ROME DEUR
EMILY HOBHOUSE ANN
MEV SMUTS GESTUUR

The house also contains Smuts' extensive personal library.

See also Jan Smuts' birthplace, Bovenplaats, in Riebeek West, Western Cape.

This site was selected as one of the ten most endangered cultural heritage sites in South Africa in 2017. The campaign is an initiative of the Heritage Monitoring Project (HMP) to identify and raise awareness of cultural heritage sites that are at significant risk from natural or human made forces. The HMP and the judges made their selection from more than 35 heritage sites nominated by the public.

See: The Heritage Portal


Books that reference Smuts House

Hatfield, Denis. 1967. Some South African monuments. Cape Town: Purnell. pg 145-147
Swart, Johan & Proust, Alain . 2019. Hidden Pretoria. Cape Town: Struik Lifestyle. pg 102-109