Prince Albert Gable

I started to post about our short trip to Prince Albert in October 2015 but did not finish.  Before visiting Prince Albert we did not know a lot about the town. It was bigger than we expected and there were a lot of old buildings to photograph. 

Fransie Pienaar Museum

One of our first stops was at the Fransie Pienaar Museum. This was n very interesting museum about the history of the town.  Unfortunately they do not allow photos inside the museum.  My fingers itched to take photos.  There is a small shop in the museum but I was disappointed that they did not postcards or photos about the museum’s collection.

The museum shop did have very interesting small books about the town written by Helena Marincowitz.  We bought two books: “Prince Albert and the Anglo Boer War” and “The Old Gables of Prince Albert”.  This is when we learned about the Prince Albert Gable.

The gable style was brought to South Africa by the settlers from Holland.  Eighteen of Prince Albert’s gable houses, built between 1840 and 1860, survived. According to “The Old Gables of Prince Albert” the gables in Prince Albert is unique. The gable has a “holbol” (concave-convex) outline and is topped with a small round or triangular pediment.

Here are some of the gables we found:

15 Kerk Street  - Ou Dokters house – 1858

4 De Beer Street – 1854

8 De Beer Street – 1860

12 De Beer Street – 1850

5 Meiring Street – Akkadisbult – 1860

88 Kerk Street – 1857

5 Kerk Street - De Bergkant Lodge – 1858

5 Kerk Street - De Bergkant Lodge – 1858

49 Kerk Street – Kuierhuis – 1858