VOC Kruithuis, Stellenbosch

The VOC Kruithuis stands at the lower end of the Braak and is the only Dutch East India Company powder magazine left in South Africa. It was completed on 5 May 1777 by the contractors Phillip Hartog and Lambert Fick, who took the tender for nine thousand guilders while the Company supplied the timber and the paving stones. Stellenbosch never faced the attack it was built for, so the building spent most of its life as the site of the town’s Friday market and later as a home for the fire brigade. It was restored by the municipality in 1936, declared a national monument in 1940, and has been run as a small military museum by the Stellenbosch Museum since 1971.

The Kruithuis is the oldest building on the Braak and the easiest to walk straight past, which is a pity, because there is nothing else like it left in the country. It was finished in 1777 to hold powder and shot for a town that was never attacked, and that anticlimax is most of its story: it became the site of the Friday market, then housed the fire brigade, then a national monument, then a museum. Inside there are seventeenth-century signalling cannons, firearms and uniforms from the town’s military past. Twenty minutes is enough. Weekdays only, which catches a lot of visitors out.

Highlights

The only Dutch East India Company powder magazine still standing in South Africa
Seventeenth-century signalling cannons, firearms and uniforms from the town’s military past
Completed on 5 May 1777, restored in 1936 and declared a national monument in 1940

Highlights

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