Ward 2 Development Forum

Keith Radmore

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descriptionPresident of the Rotary Club of Greyton and a great-great-grandson of Herbert Vigne, who founded Greyton. He keeps the Vigne family papers and a collection on Greyton and the Overberg, which he is digitising.
tagstheme/heritage, lang/en
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5 min read

For Keith Radmore to review

This page is waiting for Keith Radmore to check it. It is published now so that he can see how it fits with the rest of the site. Until he has approved the text, it may change. Questions for him:

  1. Is “President, Rotary Club of Greyton, and keeper of the Vigne family papers” the role you would like the wiki to use? If not, what wording do you prefer?
  2. In which year did you become president of the club?
  3. You give 1844 as the year Herbert Vigne sailed on the Athenian. The wiki’s page on him gives 1842. Do the family papers settle the date?
  4. Do the papers include Herbert Vigne’s will, a deed of gift for the commonage, or J.G. Rietz’s original plan of Greyton? These are the main gaps in Greyton’s written history. Once they are digitised, may the wiki cite or show any of them?
  5. What was your part in the feeding scheme of 2020?
  6. Are there wiki pages you have checked or given material for?
  7. Should readers reach you through the moderators, or would you like a public contact listed?

Keith Radmore is the president of the Rotary Club of Greyton [MS]. He is a great-great-grandson of Herbert Vigne, who laid out the village of Greyton in the 1850s [MS]. He keeps the family papers that Herbert Vigne’s writing desk held, and a collection of books, documents, articles, and stories on Greyton and the Overberg that he has built up over his adult life [MS]. He is now digitising the papers [MS].

What the letters in square brackets mean

Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.

  • [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
  • [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from the contributor’s own account, including his interview with The Greyton Post in 2026, or from what a named person has told the moderators.
  • [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.

At a glance

FieldThe history of Greyton and the Overberg, and community work across the valley [MS]
Known forThe Vigne family papers, and leading the Rotary Club of Greyton [MS]
Link to the valleyGreat-great-grandson of Herbert Vigne, the founder of Greyton [MS]

Their work

The Vigne family papers

Keith Radmore descends from Herbert Vigne through Herbert’s son, Herbert Vigne Jnr, who married Kitty Kroukamp [MS]. Through the marriages of the Vigne and Kroukamp families, he is related to other early Greyton and Overberg families, among them the Paerl, Swart, de Wet, Human, Fourie, de Kock, Groenewald, and Henn families [MS].

Herbert Vigne’s writing desk came with him from England on the ship Athenian [MS]. Keith Radmore gives the year as 1844. The wiki’s page on Herbert Vigne gives 1842, and the date is still to be settled [TBV]. The desk held documents, photographs, letters, and the family Bible [MS]. Keith Radmore has sorted and filed these papers, and is digitising them together with his own collection on Greyton and the Overberg [MS].

Samuel Baatjies of the Genadendal Mission Museum has helped him piece together Greyton’s history [MS].

Greyton Transition Town

When he came to live in Greyton, Keith Radmore became an active board member of Greyton Transition Town [MS]. Residents started it in 2011, in response to rising fuel and food costs [MS]. He says it no longer operates because it could not raise the funding it needed, though some of its work has carried on in other forms [MS]. One of these is Valley Food Gardens, which Greyton Transition Town started in 2020 [MS].

The Rotary Club of Greyton

He joined Rotary in 2017 [MS]. The club now has 17 members [MS]. He is its president [MS]. The club took part in the Forum’s inaugural meeting in September 2026 [IC]. The club’s page lists its eleven projects for 2026/27, which run across the valley [MS].

The feeding scheme of 2020

The national COVID-19 lockdown began on 27 March 2020 [IC]. Keith Radmore says that within a few days, members of the Red Cross, Rotary, Greyton Transition Town, the Greyton Ratepayers and Residents Organisation, the Dutch Reformed and Anglican churches, and local farmers were feeding 350 families across the valley [MS]. He says residents paid for it, raising more than R1 million locally [MS]. History of the Valley records the scheme.

Across the valley

He says the projects he has worked on have always been for the whole valley: Genadendal and its three satellite villages, Greyton with Heuwelkroon, and the surrounding farms in Ward 2 [MS]. He names the relationship between the communities of Genadendal and Greyton, and work through the churches to strengthen it, as the most demanding part of that work [MS].

Work on this wiki

Keith Radmore has worked with Michael Haupt, who convenes the Forum, on the valley’s history and community work for about ten years, since long before the Forum first met [MS]. Over that time he has done much of the background research behind that work, and helped coordinate it across the valley [MS].

How to reach them

Contact Keith Radmore through the moderators via How to Submit.

References

  • Ansley, P. (2026). Eight Questions with Keith Radmore. The Greyton Post. Interview, to be published. His descent from Herbert Vigne, the family papers and his collection, Greyton Transition Town, Rotary, the feeding scheme of 2020, and his work across the valley.
  • Haupt, M. Moderator’s note, 30 September 2026. His ten years of research and coordination with the convenor.
  • Rotary Club of Greyton. greytonrotary.org.

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