Ward 2 Development Forum

History of Greyton

Properties3
descriptionGreyton's story from Khoekhoe grazing land and the farm Weltevreden to the village Herbert Vigne laid out in the 1850s, the forced removals to Heuwelkroon, the nature reserve of 1977, and today. With the dates, the people, and the gaps.
tagstheme/heritage, lang/en
aliasesGreyton history, Geskiedenis van Greyton

13 min read

Greyton lies at the foot of the Riviersonderend mountains, a few kilometres east of Genadendal. It was laid out in the 1850s on a farm called Weltevreden, on land where Khoekhoe herders had grazed their cattle for centuries [IC]. This page tells Greyton’s own story, including Heuwelkroon, the part of Greyton to which coloured families were forced to move under apartheid. The story of the whole valley is on History of the Valley.

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 one community’s or organisation’s own sources. Much of Greyton’s written history comes from local histories and tourism sources that repeat each other, so they often share one origin.
  • [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.

Greyton at a glance

YearWhat happened
1669Dutch travellers find rich grazing at the Huis River, where Greyton now stands [IC]
1791Marthinus Theunissen holds Weltevreden as a loan farm [IC]
1846Herbert Vigne buys Weltevreden [IC]
1852 to 1854Greyton is laid out as a village of smallholders, and the first plots are sold in 1854 [IC]
1854The leiwater furrows begin carrying water from the Gobos River to the plots [MS]
1860The Post House and a trading store are built [IC]
1910Greyton becomes a municipality [IC]
1968 to 1974Coloured families are forced out of Greyton to Heuwelkroon [TBV]
1977The Greyton Nature Reserve is proclaimed [IC]
2000Greyton becomes part of Theewaterskloof Municipality [IC]

Before Greyton

The land around Greyton was Khoekhoe grazing land for centuries before the Dutch came [IC]. Greyton’s histories say it was home to the Hessequa, who kept thousands of cattle and sheep in kraals along the Gobos River, and named the river after an ancestral chief [TBV]. Historians of the early Cape place the Chainoqua, led in the 1600s by Soeswa, on this side of the Breede River, and the Hessequa further east [IC]. Which group grazed the Gobos valley is still open.

In 1669 Dutch travellers found unusually fine pastures at the Huis River, where Greyton now stands [IC]. The Khoekhoe moved their herds with the seasons, and the land looked empty when they were away [IC]. Greyton’s histories say that in the late 1600s the Khoekhoe leader Stoffel Koekson traded cattle with the Dutch and moved his people to Boschmanskloof [TBV]. Smallpox, brought by ships in 1713, killed many Khoekhoe, and more colonists moved onto the land [IC].

The farm Weltevreden (1791 to 1854)

The farm on which Greyton was built passed through several hands:

YearOwnerWhat the sources say
1791Marthinus TheunissenHeld it as a loan farm from the VOC [IC]. The farm was granted to him in 1793, and he built a house on it [IC]. Greyton’s histories say he left after disputes with his neighbours at Boschmanskloof and Genadendal [TBV].
1795Hendrik CloeteThe owner of Groot Constantia near Cape Town took over the farm [IC].
1839John Malcolm StewartThe first British owner of Weltevreden [IC].
1846Herbert VigneBought the farm and later laid out Greyton on it [IC].

Herbert Vigne and his older brother Henry (1805 to 1881), from a London family of Huguenot descent, came to the Cape in 1842 [TBV]. Henry farmed Tygerhoek, near present-day Riviersonderend, and the family held it for about 120 years [TBV]. Herbert first settled on a farm at Boschmanskloof, and bought Weltevreden in 1846 [TBV].

A village for smallholders (1852 to 1900)

Vigne laid out a village on Weltevreden. Sources date its founding to 1852, with the first plots sold in 1854 [IC]. He named it Greyton after Sir George Grey, the Governor of the Cape from 1854 to 1861 [IC]. The surveyor J.G. Rietz drew the plan, and the village’s layout has changed little since [IC].

Greyton was planned as a farming village for smallholders, where each family could grow much of its own food [IC]. The plan gave each owner a long, narrow plot, big enough for a house and a strip of land for crops and a few animals [IC]. Houses were built close to the street, with vegetable gardens and orchards stretching back behind them [MS]. Residents grew onions, pumpkins, apricots, and pears [MS]. Plot owners also shared grazing rights on the commonage around the village [MS].

The leiwater

The full story is on Greyton’s Leiwater.

Water made the plan work. Greyton’s leiwater (“led water”) is a network of open furrows that carries water by gravity from the Gobos River to the plots [MS]. It has served the village since its founding in 1854 [MS]. The furrows run along the streets, and each plot with a water right has a set time to open its sluice gate and flood its garden [MS]. Today the water alternates, week by week, between two zones fed from the Bo Lei Dam and the Mid Lei Dam [MS]. Volunteer water bailiffs and street wardens keep the system running [MS]. It is described as one of the last working heritage irrigation systems of its kind in South Africa [MS].

Systems like this share a few rules. Water flows by gravity along the contour, so only plots lying below a furrow can receive it [IC]. Each plot has a turn, or beurt, in a fixed cycle, and a water bailiff makes sure everyone gets their turn [IC].

Greyton was one of several villages laid out in this way in the Western Cape in the 1850s, when landowners divided farms into plots and sold them with water rights [IC]. In Montagu, subdivided from 1851, each plot’s title deed gave it one hour of irrigation water [IC]. Stanford, laid out in 1855, sold its plots “with reference to the availability of water” [IC]. In many towns these furrows have since stopped working [IC]. In Montagu, the old water rights written into title deeds were replaced by the National Water Act of 1998 [IC]. How that Act affects Greyton’s leiwater rights has not yet been checked [TBV]. South African History Online says the plots, with title deeds, water rights, and grazing rights, were sold to buyers of any race, nationality, or religion, and calls Greyton the only town in the Cape where such land was open to anyone [TBV].

Within fifty years residents had built houses, businesses, and smallholdings, opened a school, and built two churches [TBV]. The De Villiers family built a trading store in 1860 [TBV]. The Post House, built in 1860 as a trading post and lodging for travellers and later Greyton’s post office, is one of the oldest buildings in the village and a Provincial Heritage Site [IC]. By 1891 Greyton had 276 residents [IC].

From 1865 to 1880, Greyton and McGregor tried to build a road over the mountains between them, through the Boesmanskloof. They raised £700, but the money ran out [TBV].

In the 1860s Vigne married Elizabeth Belshaw, whose family home still stands in the village [MS]. Vigne died in 1895 [IC]. Parts of the building that is now Greyton Lodge date from 1882, and it once held the village’s police cells [MS]. Greyton’s histories say the village then went through hard economic times [TBV].

The 1900s

  • 1910. Greyton became a municipality [IC].
  • 1904. St Andrew’s Anglican Church was built [MS].
  • 1918. The Dutch Reformed congregation of Greyton (NG Gemeente) was founded on 7 May 1918 [MS]. Its present church was built in 1964 [MS].
  • 1920s and 1930s. Jan de Villiers opened a shop in his home in the 1920s [MS]. The grandfather of the Osman family came to Greyton in 1920, and A.G. Osman and Sons moved to its present building in 1934 [MS]. A building that was first a Dutch Reformed church is now the Moravian church in Greyton [IC]. The first Anglican services were held in a flat-roofed building that later became the Moravian school and is now the town library [TBV].
  • 1924 to 1941. A new attempt at the Boesmanskloof road began with a survey in 1924. Work resumed in 1936 as a poverty relief scheme, and stopped in 1940 or 1941 when the Second World War took the men and money [TBV]. The road was never finished [IC]. Its unfinished route is now the 14-kilometre Boesmanskloof hiking trail to McGregor, known as the “road to nowhere” [IC].

The removals to Heuwelkroon

The Group Areas Act of 1950 divided South Africa’s towns by race [IC]. In Greyton, coloured families, many of whom owned their own plots and small farms, were forced to sell and leave [IC]. Most were moved to Heuwelkroon, a new township on a hill on the edge of the village [IC]. A 2022 heritage study says some went to Genadendal [TBV].

Sources differ on the dates. Some Greyton histories say the 1950s [TBV]. An essay in the arts journal Herri dates the removals from 1968 to 1974, and the 2022 heritage study says Heuwelkroon was built in 1970 [TBV]. The two later sources agree with each other, so the removals most likely took place from the late 1960s to the early 1970s [TBV].

The Herri essay says that before the removals, Greyton’s residents “lived together irrespective of ‘race’”, and that afterwards “a community of subsistence farmers who owned their own farms were overnight reduced to having to work as gardeners and domestics for white people” [MS]. The names of the families who were moved, and of those who bought their plots, have not yet been gathered.

In the mid-1990s, a transitional council replaced Greyton’s white municipal council and the Heuwelkroon Management Committee [IC].

Mountain and commonage

On 13 May 1977 the Greyton Nature Reserve was proclaimed on the mountain commonage [IC]. It was established by Professor Brian Rycroft, then Director of Kirstenbosch [IC]. It covers about 2,200 hectares, up to the peaks of Uitkyk, Wa en Osse, and Perdekop [IC]. The Greyton Conservation Society has helped look after it since 1979 [MS].

The reserve protects Greyton Shale Fynbos, a plant community named after the village, which was listed as Critically Endangered in 2022 [IC]. In December 2019 a fire burned about 5,950 hectares on the mountain slopes above Greyton [IC].

Greyton’s histories say Vigne left the land around the village to the plot owners as a commonage [TBV]. His will or deed of gift has not been found, and the commonage passed to Theewaterskloof Municipality in 2000 [TBV].

Recent years

  • December 2000. Greyton became part of the new Theewaterskloof Municipality [IC].
  • 2011. A group of residents started Greyton Transition Town, to respond to rising fuel and food costs [MS].
  • 2019. Residents of Madiba Park, on Farm 39 land next to Heuwelkroon, protested over housing and services [IC]. See Madiba Park: Land Status and Basic Services.
  • 2025. The province granted environmental authorisation for housing on Erf 595 in Heuwelkroon [IC].

People in Greyton’s story

Families whose stories could be added, with their consent: the Osman family, traders in Greyton since 1920, and the families moved from Greyton to Heuwelkroon.

What is still open

  • Which Khoekhoe group grazed the Gobos valley, and what they called it.
  • Who dug the first leiwater furrows and dams, and how the water rights were written into the first title deeds.
  • How the National Water Act of 1998 affects the leiwater rights attached to Greyton’s plots.
  • Whether the first plots were really sold to buyers of any race. The first title deeds would show this.
  • Whether Vigne’s will or a deed created the commonage, and on what terms.
  • When exactly the removals took place, which families were moved, and who bought their plots.
  • When Greyton’s first school and churches were built, and by whom.
  • The stories of Heuwelkroon, told by the families who were moved there.

Help write this history

If your family was moved from Greyton, or you hold photographs, deeds, or stories from Greyton or Heuwelkroon, the moderators would like to hear from you through How to Submit. Accounts are added in the words of the people who give them.

References

Local and heritage histories:

  • Wikipedia. Greyton. The Hessequa, Koekson, Theunissen, Vigne, Rietz, the De Villiers store, and the Group Areas removals.
  • South African History Online. Greyton, Western Province. The founding dates, the sale of plots to any buyer, the growth of the village, and the 1891 census.
  • Xplorio Greyton. History of Greyton and Genadendal. The owners of Weltevreden, the Vigne brothers, Rietz, and the village’s first crops.
  • Greyton Transition Town. About Greyton. Theunissen’s loan farm of 1791, Cloete, Stewart, the Vigne brothers’ arrival in 1842, and Rietz.
  • Greyton Today. History. The first residents, the leiwater, and the commonage.
  • greyt.co.za. Get Involved. The leiwater’s source, schedule, zones, and volunteer bailiffs, drawing on Greyton Leiwater.
  • Towerwater aan de Breede. The lure of leiwater (2017). How leiwater systems work: gravity, turns, and water bailiffs.
  • Montagu Leiwater Users’ Association. History of the system. Water rights in title deeds from 1851, replaced by the National Water Act of 1998.
  • Heritage Western Cape. Stanford Leiwater nomination. Stanford’s plots sold with water rights from 1856, and the rarity of working furrows.
  • Greyton Tourism. Greyton’s History. The Hessequa, the Gobos River, and Theunissen.
  • Theewaterskloof Municipality. Greyton. Municipal status in 1910 and in Theewaterskloof from 2000.
  • Wikipedia. List of heritage sites in Caledon. The Post House, built in 1860.
  • GoGreyton. Greyton Village Walk. St Andrew’s (1904), the Dutch Reformed church (1964), the Belshaw home, Greyton Lodge, and the De Villiers and Osman shops.
  • Viatu. The Post House. Its uses as a trading post, lodging, and post office.

The Boesmanskloof road:

The removals and Heuwelkroon:

The mountain and commonage:

  • Country Life. Greyton’s better nature. The reserve established by Brian Rycroft in 1977.
  • CapeNature. Riviersonderend Complex Protected Area Management Plan 2021 to 2031. The Greyton fire of December 2019.
  • Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. National List of Threatened Terrestrial Ecosystems, Government Gazette 47526, GN 2747 (November 2022). Greyton Shale Fynbos.

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