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Lower Albany, South Africa history

Articles in this Journal

Outing to Hope Farm April 2024

The Lower Albany Historical Society’s first outing of the year was to Hope Farm. Our visit took place on Thursday, 18 April, a lovely sunny autumn day. Hope Farm is situated west of Port Alfred, about 7km from the Civic Centre. The history...

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Outing to Salem, ‘Place of Peace’

On 21 September 2023 - a beautiful sunny day - a good turnout of LAHS members gathered outside the famous 1832 Salem Wesleyan Church for a guided tour by Daphne McNeill. She is the granddaughter of Rev Peter Eyre, Salem minister, who died...

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185th Great Trek Celebrations

Basil came to share with LAHS an experience he’d had at the 185th Great Trek Celebrations held at the Karel Landman monument on 16 December 2023. He had been invited to assist F.A.K. with some of the practical aspects of this event, which...

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Outing to Somerset East

On Thursday, 5 October, we had our final outing of 2023. Members started early from their homes for the long drive to Somerset East. We met up at the Walter Battiss Art Museum, a beautiful double-storey settler-era house on a road full of...

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Outing to Rokeby Park and the Blaauwkrantz Bridge

The article describes an outing of the LAHS on 21 July 2022 to Rokeby Park Church, followed by a picnic tea and talk at the Blaauwkrantz Bridge. Rokeby Park was so-called by George Dyason, the leader of a 1820 Settler party, in honour of L...

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The view from the Toposcope

It is now more than forty years since the publication of my first book, The House of Phalo (1981), during which time I have done a little more research and discovered many more mistakes. A revised edition is in the pipeline (but it’s a ver...

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The Kat River Valley, Balfour and Hertzog

This article, The Kat River Valley, Balfour and Hertzog, compiled by Margaret Snodgrass, recounts a 2022 visit by historical society members to the Kat River Valley in the Eastern Cape. Drawing on sources by Blackbeard, McCracken, and Ross...

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The War of The Axe, the Seventh Frontier War

This article recounts the 1846 conflict that began in Fort Beaufort and became known as the War of the Axe—the seventh of nine Cape Frontier Wars. The immediate cause was the attempted theft of an axe by a man named Kleintjie, whose violen...

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Thomas River historical village

In Thomas River Historical Village, Dave Hawkins traces the origins and evolution of this unique Eastern Cape heritage site, named by missionary Jan van der Kemp in 1801 after the death of English deserter Thomas Bentley. Once an outspan s...

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Mgwali Mission and Tiyo Soga (c. 1829-1871)

Mgwali Mission and Tiyo Soga traces the intertwined history of the Eastern Cape’s Mgwali Mission and the life of Reverend Tiyo Soga—the first black South African to be ordained as a Christian minister and to study overseas. The narrative s...

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Fish tales on the Kowie

This article traces the scientific and historical journey of Sandelia bainsii—the “Rocky,” a rare and threatened freshwater fish native to the Eastern Cape’s Kowie, Great Fish, Keiskamma, and Buffalo rivers. Its story intertwines natural h...

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Into the thick of it

Serena Gess’s “Into the Thick of It” vividly reconstructs the experiences of the 1820 British Settlers as they encountered the dense Albany thicket on South Africa’s eastern frontier. Through historical sources, settler journals, and ecolo...

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The Bathurst Defence Complex 1820-1864

This article examines the Bathurst Defence Complex, a crucial but geographically flawed military and civilian refuge on the Cape frontier, operational from its establishment in 1820 until its abandonment in 1864. Initiated by Acting Govern...