Somerset West - history
The history of Somerset West is to a great part the history of the most famous Cape Dutch manor Vergelegen. In 1657 the first Europeans, three cattle dealers from Cape Town, travelled into the region at the Helderberg, the clear mountain, which rises above the present Somerset West.
Living there at the time were about five hundred members of the Chainoukwa Clan. The wealth of these people, who regarded their homeland with much pride as the most beautiful place in the world, and the beauty of the land as such were reason enough for the three Dutch travellers to give the area the name which it still carries today: Hottentots Holland.
Fifteen years later the Chainoukwa sold their land and ownership shifted to the Dutch East India Company. Shortly afterwards governor Willem Adrian van der Stel visited the estate and fell in love with it. Employees of the company were not allowed to acquire any property - however, van der Stel bypassed this regulation by bestowing land to his brother Frans and himself. On February first 1700, van der Stel let a dignitary who was passing through bestow the distant estate Vergelegen to himself. And so began an obsession to which we today owe the existence of the stunning estate with its century old trees, its incomparably beautiful park, the old white Cape Dutch houses and its magnificent garden. It is also this obsession that cost van der Stel his job in office and his honour.
The governor soon only had interest in increasing size and beauty of his property and disregarded his duties. This news reached the head of the company in Holland and in 1707 van der Stel was removed from office and ordered back to Holland. Vergelegen went back into company ownership and its land was divided. The marvellous mansion was demolished - the strict Calvinists in Holland regarded it as being too pompous.
Many estates were established in the area around Vergelegen, but none can compare in beauty. 1817 the farmers decided to build a communal church which would spare them the trip to Stellenbosch each Sunday. Three years later the construction was complete and the English governor Lord Somerset gave official permission to give the hereby newly established town his name: Somerset. (The add-on West is to distinguish between a town in the Eastern Cape which also received the Lords name.)
