Prior to the arrival of the Dutch, Cape Town, SA had a bad reputation as a hangout for sailors on leave. There were bars, gambling dens and brothels all competing with the respectable town folk for a piece of the local currency. After the Dutch settled in Cape Town, they made a sincere effort to establish a clean, respectable town. Eventually Cape Town came to resemble a pleasant Dutch Colonial town, complete with low white washed houses. The early houses in the Cape Town area were built in the Cape Dutch Architectural style and were organized in a neat grid with the borders of the mountain to the north and the bay to the south. The earliest houses were single-storied dwellings and purely utilitarian. They usually consisted of three rooms in a row and had steeply pitched roofs supported by rafters. They were built of local materials: walls consisted of clay or thick rubble (later of burnt brick), sea shells provided the basis for lime-mortar and wild reeds were used for thatch. At the beginning of the 18th century, with increasing prosperity in the towns and the development of wine farms, houses began to expand. They began to reflect the growing needs and individual taste of each owner. It was at this stage that the front gable began to make its appearance. The gables, largely in the hands of skilled craftsmen imported as slaves from the east, began to develop in a variety of styles and decorations. In time, the original floor plans took on new layouts. The evolution being the “U” shaped or “H” shaped plans. The “H” plan became the ultimate design in country houses and on which some of the Western Cape’s most elegant farmsteads were designed.

Nowadays country houses and farmsteads have been converted into the top Cape Town hotels. For examples of authentic Cape Dutch architecture, consider the Courtyard Hotel, Cape Town, Mowbry or The Greenways Hotel in Upper Claremont, SA.