Wheatfields & Windmills

Wheatfields & Windmils by Jim Hislop

It's easy to forget that Observatory in Cape Town, or Obs as residents call it. was once a rural area and home to some of the first free burgher farms in the country. Once there were fields of wheat and barley where today rows of Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses stand.

The aim of Jim Hislop's book - Wheatfields & Windmill, The Old Homesteads and farms of Observatory & Surrounds - is to celebrate the Observatory area's early architectural heritage. Included in the 144-page, A4, full-colour book are maps, information and photographs of the old buildings that survive, and those that are now long gone, plus references to the free burghers who farmed here. Coornhoop, Valkenberg, Wrensch House, Varsche Drift, Westoe, Nieuwe Molen and Oude Molen are just some of the old buildings covered in this interesting book.

The author: Jim Hislop is an amateur historian with a passion for old buildings, who grew up in Mowbray, works in Observatory and is a member of the Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa (VASSA).