Before Vredenburg had its name, it had a fight over water. In the 1870s the settlement on the Cape Columbine Peninsula was called Twisfontein, “dispute fountain,” because two farmers quarrelled over the only freshwater spring in the area. When they settled the matter, the town was renamed Vredenburg, “peace.” The town dates from 1875 and began as a Dutch Reformed congregation, because the nearest church was in Hopefield.
That church shaped the story of Juffroushoogte. Farmers living in and around Twisfontein had to reach Sunday service, so they left in the small hours with a horse and cart, steering a single mare east. After the service they would meet the people worth meeting, then head home. About five miles out of Twisfontein, they stopped to rest.
By around the turn of the twentieth century, the old farmstead of the farm “Eenzaamheid” (Loneliness) was in use as a rest-over for travellers arriving in Vredenburg by horse-drawn cart. The young women of the district, the juffrous, would freshen up there before the last stretch into town. Because the farmstead stood on a rise, a hoogte, the townspeople eventually called it Juffroushoogte. The farm’s own history dates its hospitality from 1902.
Over a century later, the place still does what it did then. It sits just outside Vredenburg on the R45, about an hour from Cape Town, and still takes in travellers exploring the West Coast. The old farmstead has grown into a guest farm with a restaurant and a pub, built around the same idea as the original stop: somewhere to rest before the last leg.
