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Middleburg is a town in the karoo near the border of the Northern Cape Province. Middelburg is surrounded by open plains, big skies and flat topped mountains that characterize this part of South Africa.
MIDDELBURG
Middleburg is a town in the karoo near the border of the Northern Cape Province. Middelburg is surrounded by open plains, big skies and flat topped mountains that characterize this part of South Africa. The area is the centre of the wool and mohair industry in South Africa, and has many game farms and hunting concessions in the area.
In April 1852 the Dutch Reformed Church purchased the farm Driefontein with the intention of providing the local Boer farmers with a congregation, as previously they had to travel to Colesberg, 100 kilometres away, in order to attend services. The town was named Middelburg because it was almost an equal distant to the other Karoo towns that existed at the time. Several of the older structures in the town remain after the Anglo Boer War. The tower of the Dutch Reformed Church was used by the British as an observation post. There was also a British encampment at Grootfontein which after the war became a very well respected agricultural college and houses one of the oldest buildings in the district, a house from the early Nineteenth Century built in the Cape Dutch style which is a museum today.
Source: Courtesy Eastern Cape Tourism Board - www.ectb.co.za
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