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Canon on the Paardeberg
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For the second year running, Barry Schreiber, whose family has farmed on the Paardeberg for many years, has initiated an outing up the mountain to look at its cannon.
Barry sent us this piece on the canon:
The history of the cannon is interesting. Originally, in the late 1600’s, they were part of a call-up system to protect the Cape route, which by the mid-1750’s, was widely employed in the Western Cape, as far as Swellendam. Strategically placed cannons were fired to alert locals, who would gather to thwart any invasion.
We
think that there were originally 3 cannon on the Paardeberg dating
from this era. One of these was on Sonkop
(on our farm), but it was removed to Malmesbury. On the Paarl
side, one is to be seen on top of the Paardeberg at Vondeling, and a
third cannon was found in the bush on a steep mountain slope. This
one was removed in 2010 (with great effort), cleaned up & can now
be seen at Slent
farm.
Local
belief has it that these were also signal
cannons –
that is when a ship arrived in table bay harbour, the captain would
say what his requirements were in terms of wheat, meat and wine, and
this message would be relayed by the network of cannons,
starting at the Cape town Castle, which fired off a specific
sequence of shots . A person stationed on the Paardeberg would in
turn fire off appropriate shots west, along the coast, north towards
Piketberg
and east towards Paarl.
The goods would then be gathered in these places and sent off to Cape
Town thus saving a lot of time and effort.
Up to some
70-odd years ago some of the local Louw family used to fire the
Vondeling cannon occasionally. Unfortunately, with the last attempt,
it overturned resulting in a fire and the cannoneurs hurrying home
with singed beards & burned britches!
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