Steenberg Farmstead, Tokai Road, Constantia

The Steenberg Estate, originally known as the Zwaanswyk, was granted to Catherina Ustings in 1688 and was one of the first farms in the Western Cape. Its Cape Dutch homestead was erected in about 1740, and its verandah and outbuildings were added at the beginning of the 19th century. It was declared a National Monument under old NMC legislation on 7 October 1983. Despite a twist of fate preventing its interior overhaul, the new owner of this gracious Steenberg Estate manor created something beautiful. Steenberg Estate has known its fair share of gutsy women. As a lone widow of 22, Catharina Ras, the first owner of ‘the Farm below the stone Mountain’, boarded a sailing ship just 10 years after the arrival in South Africa of Jan van Riebeeck. She made the perilous journey from her home in Lubeck on the Baltic Coast of Germany to the furthest tip of Africa. What she found when she arrived was certainly no land of milk and honey. Instead, it was a fierce, wild place; twenty years and five husbands later, the fiercely independent Catharina convinced Cape Governor Simon van der Stel to grant her the mandate ‘to cultivate, to plough, to sow and also to possess’ a 25-morgen portion of Land at the foot of Steenberg – and thus was born the first Farm in the Constantia Valley.