After reading what Paul had written about Longkloof in the previous post, my immediate thought was, "Pah! How hard can it be to find some information about this historical building? Must be all over the web, surely... he couldn't have googled very well..."
I had to eat my words, of course, after paying a visit to Google. Plenty has been written about Longkloof the area, but I couldn't find anything about this building. I couldn't even find a photograph of it online, which surprised me, because I thought it was a fairly obvious subject for a photo shoot. I'm not one to give up when faced with a mystery, though, so I kept on hunting.
I found this set of notes by Anne Lehmkuhl (definitely worth a read if history fascinates you), from which I was able to deduce that the building was once the wine cellar of the farm Groot Moddergat, and was built somewhere around 1841.
But I wanted to know what the building is NOW. Not content, I kept going, trying a bunch of different search terms, until eventually I struck gold. Or rather... clay. Because, as it turns out, the building now houses... drum roll, please... A POTTERY STUDIO.
It was no easy job to figure that out, let me tell you. And even once I'd worked it out using my superior powers of observation, I still couldn't find a single website to actually verify this information. So how did I know? Well, while Paul was taking photos of the building, I happened to notice the unusual fence adjoining the house, just off to the right of this shot. And when I saw this photo on the Longkloof Pottery site, I recognised the fence and wall immediately.
Now, please don't go knocking on the door and demanding to see the pottery - judging by the lack of information on the web and the lack of signage outside the property, I'm guessing that the talented resident potter, Yogi, would prefer to keep his studio a sanctuary. (And a pretty awesome sanctuary it must be too!) Visit his website to see more of his remarkable work and find out how to contact him.