Pioneer Museum Silverton, Pretoria

Pioneer Museum Silverton, Pretoria

The Pioneer open air Museum in Silverton is set in a graciously restored Victorian settler farmstead complete with horse mill and threshing floor, farming implements intact. A visit to the three hectare area gives one a real sense of early farming culture in South Africa, as one takes a guided tour around the farm, that includes cooking method demonstrations and farming techniques from early times.

Where else can you see early bread baked in an old clay oven, candle making with animal fat, hands-on milking, wheat grinding, muzzle loading and even the roasting of coffee beans? The historic farmyard and farm house were initially the property of David Botha, a Cape farmer, who later sold the farm to Hans Mundt, a German immigrant, in 1874. He used some rather different and new farming methods, such as erecting outbuildings for his poultry, and, because of the ideal position of the farm in proximity to the discovery of gold at Lydenburg and Pilgrim’s Rest, the farm became a halfway house for travellers to and from Pretoria.

Cows, goats, donkeys, ducks, chickens and peacocks roam the farmyard, adding further to the atmosphere of the farm - a traditional T-shaped house complete with thatched roof and traditional dung and peach-pip floor. Even the original type of pioneer furniture is evident in the rooms to give one a true insight into what it must have been like for the original pioneers to this part of the country.