Prynnsberg Estate
Encyclopedia
Prynnsberg was a manor built between 1881 and 1884 in Clocolan
, Free State
, South Africa
by Charles Newberry (1841-1922) who immigrated to South Africa in 1864 as a carpenter to join his older brother John, mining in Greytown
and eventually gained enough holdings in the Kimberly
diamond mining industry to stop actively mining and build his mansion. Charles's daughter was Winifred Brunton
.
. By the time Cecil Rhodes came to consolidate all the independent claims in the Big Hole to create De Beers Charles Newberry and his brother John had built up a substantial holding in "the big hole
" . When Rhodes's consolidation came about in 1879 Charles Newberry found himself free to pursue other ventures while John became a director of the newly formed De Beers. Having met and fallen in love with the daughter of a Lesotho based missionary (Elizabeth Danial daughter of the Rev John Danial) while on a trip through the Eastern Free State he decided to make the Eastern Free State his home and along with his new wife set about the fulfillment of his dream of creating a classic English country estate in the wilds of Africa. Having purchased the foundation of the estate from a man named Prynn he christened his venture Prynnsberg in 1881. The estate - which in its heyday covered over 20,000 hectares of land lies on the edge of the Maluti Mountains under a sandstone cliff in the Thaba Nchu District
.
. The estate included two churches, a vicarage, a gamekeepers’ lodge, stables and various outbuildings. The house was built in old-world grandeur, becoming a national gem and, was decorated by the London firm James Shoolbred and Company
of Tottenham Court Road. Prynnsberg includes enormous rooms of gold leaf and flocked wallpapers, intricate oak parquet, pressed leather paneling, rococo plaster ceilings, gilded cornices, elaborate tiled fireplaces, leaded windows and teak doors with Victorian stained glass and flamboyant friezes. Also there was a 700-Volt D.C. Dynamo
which supplied power to the lathe
s refrigerator for the Cold Room where fruit from the orchard was stored.
/Zulu sculpture and other Southern Bantu tribal items. The entirety of the collection came from Zulu, Xhosa, Venda, Sotho, Ndebele, Tsonga, Northern Nguni, and related peoples.
The many Egyptian artifacts around the Prynnsberg estate came from the well-known English Egyptologist Guy Brunton
who was married to Charles’ oldest daughter Winifred. Winifred Brunton
who has also made a name for herself through her art created many murals and paintings within the house.
, President Steyn and Rudyard Kipling
, who painted a frieze of Noah’s ark in the night nursery. Amazingly, during the Boer War
of 1899 to 1902, when Charles and his family moved back to Surrey, England for the duration, the estate was left unharmed, amongst the other farm burnings and destruction.
What this amounted to was that the four generations to follow him would be merely trustees of the estate - on behalf of a yet to be born inheritor.
In his own mind Charles Newberry must have thought that the extent of the wealth he would be leaving behind would be more than enough to sustain the four generations that followed. This was not the case. Elizabeth Newberry outlived Charles by some eight years. By the time she passed the estate onto their eldest son Ernest (their first born John Daniel - twin to Amie - having been killed in a World War 1 flying accident) the substantial family holding in De Beers shares was gone, as was seemingly any working capital.
Herein lies the key to Prynnsberg's neglect over the generations that followed. Living in a vast house surrounded by the likes of Chippendale furniture and a priceless collection of art, antiques and rare artefacts but with no working capital, they found themselves trapped in a gilded cage.
Ernests' son Edgar (second generation inheritor) was recorded to have said that he "couldn't stand the place". Plagued by an addiction to alcohol - like his father and mother - his son Trevor proved to be the least capable of all at sustaining any sort of control over the crumbling estate. By the time Trevor Newberry died intestate of an alcohol-induced end in the late 1980s Charles Newberry's Prynnsberg dream lay in tatters.
Aged family heirlooms and portraits were carried off like prizes, but luckily, the over three-hundred cultural items held in the museum were purchased together by Ed Smith and shipped to a museum in San Diego before the general auction took place.
The current owner of Prynnsberg, which has been restored is Rick Melvill and the estate has been able to gain back some of its charm of the old days.
Clocolan
Clocolan, established in 1906, is a small town in the Free State province of South Africa. The Basotho called the place Hlohlolwane . New inhabitants mispronounced the name and called it Clocolan....
, Free State
Free State
The Free State is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bloemfontein, which is also South Africa's judicial capital. Its historical origins lie in the Orange Free State Boer republic and later Orange Free State Province. The current borders of the province date from 1994 when the Bantustans...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
by Charles Newberry (1841-1922) who immigrated to South Africa in 1864 as a carpenter to join his older brother John, mining in Greytown
Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal
Greytown is a town situated on the banks of a tributary of the Umvoti River in a richly fertile timber-producing area of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.-History:...
and eventually gained enough holdings in the Kimberly
Kimberley, Northern Cape
Kimberley is a city in South Africa, and the capital of the Northern Cape. It is located near the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The town has considerable historical significance due its diamond mining past and siege during the Second Boer War...
diamond mining industry to stop actively mining and build his mansion. Charles's daughter was Winifred Brunton
Winifred Brunton
Winifred Mabel Brunton née Newberry was a painter most famous for her portraits of Egyptian pharaohs, published as Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt and Great Ones of Ancient Egypt . She married Egyptologist Guy Brunton on 28 April 1906...
.
Pre-Prynnsberg years
When the Kimberly Mines opened in 1872, Charles Newberry spent seven years digging in the hottest Kimberly weather for diamonds gaining enough holdings to be a shareholder in Cecil Rhodes Central Mining Company, which became De BeersDe Beers
De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea...
. By the time Cecil Rhodes came to consolidate all the independent claims in the Big Hole to create De Beers Charles Newberry and his brother John had built up a substantial holding in "the big hole
Big Hole
The Big Hole, Open Mine or Kimberley Mine is an open-pit and underground mine in Kimberley, South Africa, and claimed to be the largest hole excavated by hand.-History:...
" . When Rhodes's consolidation came about in 1879 Charles Newberry found himself free to pursue other ventures while John became a director of the newly formed De Beers. Having met and fallen in love with the daughter of a Lesotho based missionary (Elizabeth Danial daughter of the Rev John Danial) while on a trip through the Eastern Free State he decided to make the Eastern Free State his home and along with his new wife set about the fulfillment of his dream of creating a classic English country estate in the wilds of Africa. Having purchased the foundation of the estate from a man named Prynn he christened his venture Prynnsberg in 1881. The estate - which in its heyday covered over 20,000 hectares of land lies on the edge of the Maluti Mountains under a sandstone cliff in the Thaba Nchu District
Thaba Nchu
Thaba Nchu is a town in Free State, South Africa, located 60 km east of Bloemfontein. Its population is largely made up of Tswana and Sotho people. The town was settled in the 1830s and officially established in 1873...
.
Building Prynnsberg
The house began as additions to the original single story farmhouse and became a three-story, 20-room manor, constructed of finely crafted sandstone in the African veldVeld
The term Veld refers primarily to the wide open rural spaces of South Africa or southern Africa and in particular to certain flatter areas or districts covered in grass or low scrub...
. The estate included two churches, a vicarage, a gamekeepers’ lodge, stables and various outbuildings. The house was built in old-world grandeur, becoming a national gem and, was decorated by the London firm James Shoolbred and Company
James Shoolbred (department store)
James Shoolbred and Company was a draper and later a department store, located on Tottenham Court Road, London.The store was established in the 1820's at 155 Tottenham Court Road selling textiles for home furnishing. In the 1870's the store began designing, manufacturing and selling high quality...
of Tottenham Court Road. Prynnsberg includes enormous rooms of gold leaf and flocked wallpapers, intricate oak parquet, pressed leather paneling, rococo plaster ceilings, gilded cornices, elaborate tiled fireplaces, leaded windows and teak doors with Victorian stained glass and flamboyant friezes. Also there was a 700-Volt D.C. Dynamo
Dynamo
- Engineering :* Dynamo, a magnetic device originally used as an electric generator* Dynamo theory, a theory relating to magnetic fields of celestial bodies* Solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the Sun's magnetic field- Software :...
which supplied power to the lathe
Lathe
A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.Lathes are used in woodturning,...
s refrigerator for the Cold Room where fruit from the orchard was stored.
Prynnsberg artifacts and paintings
Approximately between 1884 and 1900, Charles and his wife Elizabeth collected local cultural art, which were housed in a private museum. Most of the items were 19th century, including arguably the world’s finest NguniNguni people
-History:The ancient history of the Nguni people is wrapped up in their oral history. According to legend they were a people who migrated from Egypt to the Great Lakes region of sub-equatorial Central/East Africa...
/Zulu sculpture and other Southern Bantu tribal items. The entirety of the collection came from Zulu, Xhosa, Venda, Sotho, Ndebele, Tsonga, Northern Nguni, and related peoples.
The many Egyptian artifacts around the Prynnsberg estate came from the well-known English Egyptologist Guy Brunton
Guy Brunton
Guy Brunton OBE was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the Badarian culture. He married Winifred Newberry on 28 April 1906...
who was married to Charles’ oldest daughter Winifred. Winifred Brunton
Winifred Brunton
Winifred Mabel Brunton née Newberry was a painter most famous for her portraits of Egyptian pharaohs, published as Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt and Great Ones of Ancient Egypt . She married Egyptologist Guy Brunton on 28 April 1906...
who has also made a name for herself through her art created many murals and paintings within the house.
The golden years
During Prynnsberg’s greatest years, when Charles still was head of the household, there were as many as 17 Europeans employed on the estate including a horticulturist, forester, tutor, two farm managers, stone cutters, masons and others. The estate often housed travelers of similar rank and guests such as: Lord Milner, the Duke of WestminsterDuke of Westminster
The title Duke of Westminster was created by Queen Victoria in 1874 and bestowed upon Hugh Grosvenor, 3rd Marquess of Westminster. The current holder of the title is Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster....
, President Steyn and Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, who painted a frieze of Noah’s ark in the night nursery. Amazingly, during the Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
of 1899 to 1902, when Charles and his family moved back to Surrey, England for the duration, the estate was left unharmed, amongst the other farm burnings and destruction.
Charles Newberry's will
In an attempt to save the estate for future generations Charles Newberry invoked a South African inheritance clause that left the estate to the eldest son of the fourth generation to follow him ('fidae comissium').What this amounted to was that the four generations to follow him would be merely trustees of the estate - on behalf of a yet to be born inheritor.
In his own mind Charles Newberry must have thought that the extent of the wealth he would be leaving behind would be more than enough to sustain the four generations that followed. This was not the case. Elizabeth Newberry outlived Charles by some eight years. By the time she passed the estate onto their eldest son Ernest (their first born John Daniel - twin to Amie - having been killed in a World War 1 flying accident) the substantial family holding in De Beers shares was gone, as was seemingly any working capital.
Herein lies the key to Prynnsberg's neglect over the generations that followed. Living in a vast house surrounded by the likes of Chippendale furniture and a priceless collection of art, antiques and rare artefacts but with no working capital, they found themselves trapped in a gilded cage.
Ernests' son Edgar (second generation inheritor) was recorded to have said that he "couldn't stand the place". Plagued by an addiction to alcohol - like his father and mother - his son Trevor proved to be the least capable of all at sustaining any sort of control over the crumbling estate. By the time Trevor Newberry died intestate of an alcohol-induced end in the late 1980s Charles Newberry's Prynnsberg dream lay in tatters.
Inheritance Breach
The true line of inheritance should have been as follows: Charles Newberry I, Edgar Edward Newberry, Trevor Newberry (no heirs), then back to Peter Newberry, then his son Robin Newberry, to Charles Newberry and then John Newberry. Due to the corrupt nationalist government of South Africa, the four-generation trust of the original will of Charles Newberry was allowed to be broken. The oldest son of the third generation, Trevor Newberry had no heir, yet instead of the inheritance passing on to the next male heir, Peter Newberry and through him, his son Robin, nationalist law caused the manor to pass back up the line to relatives of Trevor Newberry. Therefore, the four-generation trust was broken, leaving the true heir with nothing and Sotheby’s was brought to auction everything in the bankrupt house in 1994. The much-anticipated auction was held in 1996.Aged family heirlooms and portraits were carried off like prizes, but luckily, the over three-hundred cultural items held in the museum were purchased together by Ed Smith and shipped to a museum in San Diego before the general auction took place.
The current owner of Prynnsberg, which has been restored is Rick Melvill and the estate has been able to gain back some of its charm of the old days.