Vergelegen today: In the year 1700, Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel went against company rules to grant himself a vast tract of land near modern-day Somerset West. Using company slaves, labour, materials and seed, he transformed Vergelegen into the biggest agricultural producer at the Cape. And then he sold the produce to the company he controlled at prices he determined!

No verified pictures of Willem Adriaan – or his more famous father, Simon van der Stel – have survived. The best we’ve got is this replica of a painting (destroyed in a fire in Dublin in 1962) which supposedly showed Willem Adriaan as a toddler (on the horse) – fittingly being “propped up” by his father.

Company rules forbade Willem Adriaan from owning ‘larger gardens or a greater number of cattle than [he] required for the use of [his] own household’. Instead, he hoodwinked his boss into signing off on a transfer deed which granted him the land currently occupied by Vergelegen, Morgenster, Lourensford and the town of Somerset West. He named it Vergelegen (‘distantly situated’), a reference to the 12 hours it took to reach from the Cape.

At Vergelegen, he used company resources to establish ‘country seat, large beyond measure, and of such broad dimensions, as if it were a whole town.’ But this wasn’t just a holiday home: it was the biggest money spinner in the colony. The local farmers, who were struggling to make ends meet due to the Governor’s monopoly, eventually plucked up the courage to smuggle a complaint onto a ship bound for Batavia. This image is taken from that document, known as the ‘Memorial.’

When Van der Stel caught wind of the complaint, he invited all the Cape’s menfolk to a soiree at the Castle. After plying them with free booze and tobacco, he strongarmed attendees into signing a ‘certificate of good conduct’ (pictured here), proclaiming him to be ‘a person of all honour and virtue in his whole conduct, government, intercourse, and treatment.’

Van der Stel lived out his days in Leyden in the Netherlands. This image – attempting to depict Vergelegen as a modest home surrounded by savages and wilderness – is taken from a 304-page propaganda rag he produced in an attempt to exonerate himself. The public weren’t having it, however, and he died wealthy but friendless in 1733.

VOC HQ: Despite the Governor’s strongarm tactics, the Dutch East India Company bosses in Amsterdam ruled in the farmers’ favour, dismissing Willem Adriaan as governor and selling Vergelegen off for the public benefit. Curiously, the proceeds of the sale of the Vergelegen manor house went to van der Stel – despite him not paying a cent to build it.