Archive
the lord milner
Volume 6 (Escape), Spring 2022
Words by Toast Coetzer Photography by Inge Prins Art direction & Styling by Charl Francois Edwards
The present. A medium-sized leopard tortoise steps onto a highway in the middle of South Africa’s Karoo semi-desert.
Heatwaves distort the background, a crow settles on a telephone pole, watching.
Focus changes from tortoise to truck, rattling along the highway. The tortoise freezes comically, one foot in the air.
It is only halfway across.
Inside the truck, the driver’s eyes widen, the matchstick dropping from the corner of his mouth. He swerves, but the truck’s gigantic wheel passes so close to the tortoise that it flings it to the side of the road, where the shell spins, wobbles, and comes to a standstill.
Then a head emerges, unscathed. The tortoise gingerly starts walking down a side road.
The sign says: Matjiesfontein.
Meet the entertainer…
‘I was born in Matjiesfontein in 1967 and started working at the hotel as a porter in 1983. Over the years I’ve worked with many amazing people, like the legendary David Rawdon. He was a father figure to me and many others here. We are a very close-knit family of people working together here. I’ve become known for the tours I lead through town – we do it by double-decker bus every night at 6 pm. It just takes 10 minutes of course, because Matjiesfontein is so small. They say if you slaughtered a chicken here, the whole town would be full of feathers! The tour ends at the bar, where I often entertain people on the piano with renditions of songs like “Ou Ryperd”, “Blueberry Hill” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.’
– Johnny Theunissen, Entertainer and Tour Guide, The Lord Milner Hotel
If from the outside the symmetry of the building – which evokes part desert castle a la Wizard of Id cartoon strip and part cowboy flick balcony – has already suggested something to your subconscious, entering The Lord Milner Hotel in Matjiesfontein will confirm that you’ve stepped right into a movie or some other kind of fictional escape which, as a guest, you are inexorably tied to as an actor for the duration of your stay. Inside, you are confronted with a wide staircase that seems to want to suck you into its late Victorian era interior. A tottering chandelier above, a well-trod carpet below, pictures of forgotten colonial area faces framed on the wall. Wes Anderson would’ve had a ball here, you might think. To the right, a glimpse into a dining hall where many tables and chairs are set and ready, but for which mass of people, you wonder, as it seemed to be a thoroughly one-horse, one-street town as you drove in. (A few more streets lie in the neighbourhood on the other side of the railway.)
To the left, the reception desk where you might have to tinkle a bell. Somewhere in the back of the building a door will open and close, footsteps will shuffle over tiled floors, then whisper over carpets, then flick over tiles again. A warm greeting will meet you, a friendly face. It’s a domino effect, you’ll soon learn, and by checking in here, you’ve set the process in motion.
Above The famous yellow lounge, filled with musical instruments, antiques, artworks, trinkets, books and board games, adding to the magic of the space.
Meet the guest…
‘When I first visited Matjiesfontein, I was blown away by this piece of Victoriana seemingly in the middle of nowhere – and in Africa! I thought “What? Why? When?!” Matjiesfontein became my special place for the ensuing 20 years as I set to writing a book to answer all my own questions. Here, the ghosts of soldiers and cricketers exist alongside the rich and famous of the late 1800s. I was inspired to write the real story of this place by the late David Rawdon. He made a deal with me that if I wrote a book to put Matjiesfontein on the map again, then the breakfasts were on him! That’s precisely why it took me so long to write it…’
– Dr Dean Allen, author of Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa: Logan of Matjiesfontein
Left The famous yellow lounge, filled with musical instruments, antiques, artworks, trinkets, books and board games, adding to the magic of the space.
Leaving your room later to explore the expansive garden in the back – towards the pool, as big as a farm dam, waiting under huge bluegums a century old – you’ll notice fresh guests checking in. The cast is growing, and everyone’s reading from slightly different scripts. By sunset, there’s laughter and the clink of glasses in the bar and soon the famous town tour of Matjiesfontein will commence. Famous because it lasts only 10 minutes and is conducted in a red double-decker bus that must have apparated here as if by magic. Although the truth is more straightforward (the bus was one of 100 or so from London, imported to Cape Town in the 1960s for public transport) it is emblematic of the quirky genius of Matjiesfontein’s former owner and wizard-in-chief, David Rawdon. He bought the bus as exhibit for Matjiesfontein’s Transport Museum, where it was fixed up and eventually turned into an official tour bus.
Matjiesfontein consists of a restored street of houses dating back to the town’s origin as a railway station in 1878, when the first track was laid from Cape Town to the diamond fields of Kimberley. Scottish railwayman James Logan (the original ‘laird’ of Matjiesfontein) realised the potential of an overnight stop – and general escape into the drier, healthier climate of the Karoo – and bought the land around the station. By 1899 The Milner Hotel opened its doors, just as war brewed in the interior between the British colonial forces and the Boer republics. Matjiesfontein served as a hub where anyone who is anyone had to pass through: Cecil John Rhodes, a few famous cricket players, Rudyard Kipling and Olive Schreiner all left their mark.
In 1968, hotelier David Rawdon bought the property and renamed the hotel The Lord Milner Hotel. His constant, almost regal presence at the hotel became an attraction in itself (he passed away in 2010). Today, The Lord Milner Hotel preserves a patch of the past while maintaining an authentic guest experience thanks to the dedicated staff, many of whom have worked here for decades. The longer you linger, the more it becomes obvious: they are the lead actors in this movie; you are a background actor. To settle in here, stroll its creaky wooden floors, to sit down in a plush chair in a lounge where once Olive Schreiner might have sat to pen a letter – this is how you play along in Matjiesfontein, this is how you act out your role in The Lord Milner Hotel. Push open the front door, and the first domino falls…
Above The iconic facade of The Lord Milner hotel, a welcoming sight for guests who have just arrived at this quaint town. Visitors can hop onto the famous red Beefeater tour bus, in what is jokingly referred to as the world’s shortest bus ride. Each bedroom has its own unique colour palette, quaint decor scheme and matching fabrics, with furniture dating back to the early days of the hotel.
