Colesberg

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Colesberg is a South African town in the Northern Cape and on the main road from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Founded in 1830 on an abandoned station of the London Missionary Society, it was named after Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole, then Governor of the Cape Colony. The site of the town lay on one of the well-travelled routes used by traders, hunters and explorers to gain access to the interior. Towerberg or Coleskop is a prominent hill near the town and a landmark easily seen from a distance by travellers.

The town boasts many buildings that were built in a blend of Cape Dutch and Georgian architecture with ceilings of reed, and yellowwood timbers, and others that display a range of designs reflecting the changes of 19th century building. Originally plots were pegged out and sold on the site of the town to fund the building of the Dutch Reformed church.

Colesberg saw a large number of battles and skirmishes during the second Anglo-Boer War, and the Colesberg Garden of Remembrance is located just outside the town. Farming in the area is dedicated almost entirely to horses and merino sheep, while the ostrich-feather boom of the early 1900s, which left many farmers rich, is long forgotten. The Doornkloof Nature Reserve is located near Colesberg on the confluence of the Orange and Seekoei Rivers.

A number of 1820 Settlers established farms in the Colesberg district. Outnumbered as a religious group, some attended the Methodist Church and others the Dutch Reformed Church, where services in English were specially held for them. Anglican officials in Cape Town appointed Dr CEH Orpen as Rector and the first services were conducted in the Court House and the London Mission Chapel, which became known as St Stephen's Church. In 1852 the construction of the Anglican Christ Church was started, having been designed by Sophy Gray, wife of the Cape Town bishop Robert Gray.