Groote Schuur

Your Cape Town tour can include a visit to the Grootte Schuur Hospital. Cecil Rhodes acquired the Groote Schuur ('great barn') estate in 1893 and bequeathed it to the South African nation on his death in 1902. A delightful estate on the slopes of Devil's Peak, it includes the Cape Town residences of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, a small game reserve, the Rhodes Memorial, the University of Cape Town and its medical school, and the Groote Schuur Hospital. Groote Schuur estate shares its name with that of the former residence of the Prime Minister. In its present handsome form, the house was the creation of Cecil Rhodes and famous architect, Sir Herbert Baker. The building was originally a storage barn built by Jan van Riebeeck. It had been converted into a house in later years by English owners, then acquired by Rhodes, partly burned down by fire, and then rebuilt. Adjoining the grounds of Groote Schuur Rhodes built a second house. This was named Woolsack and was used as a summer residence by Rudyard Kipling, a great friend of Rhodes. This house is now used as a residence by the University of Cape Town. The official residence of the President of South Africa, Westbrooke, is close to Groote Schuur. The three houses stand in a fine setting of trees and gardens. Large paddocks on the eastern slopes of Devil's Peak and Table Mountain provide grazing grounds for herds of antelope, which include gnu, eland, zebra and bontebok. Until recently there was also a small zoo on the estate. In founding the zoo, Rhodes bestowed a mixed blessing on Cape Town. Among the animals he imported were thars (Himalayan mountain goats). Some escaped and fled up Table Mountain where they rapidly increased in numbers. The descendants of the thars remained on the mountain until quite recently. Chinese deer and American grey squirrels were other imports by Rhodes whose numbers now cause concern. The Rhodes Memorial was built in 1912 on a site particularly beloved by him. It is an impressive monument, designed by Francis Masey and Sir Herbert Baker. The powerful equestrian bronze by G. F. Watts, Energy, dominates the memorial, with eight lions guarding a flight of stairs leading to a granite building sheltering a bronze head of Rhodes. Underneath the bust are the words Kipling wrote on Rhodes's death: 'The immense and brooding spirit still shall quicken and control. Living he was the land and dead his soul shall be her soul.' The memorial stands in a setting of stone pines, and the view out across the Cape Flats is splendid. The University of Cape Town, founded in 1829 as the South African College, moved to its present site on the Groote Schuur estate in 1925. It is one of the oldest universities in the southern hemisphere. The vast white building complex of the Groote Schuur Hospital, where the world's first human heart trans-plant was performed by Professor Christiaan Barnard in 1967, borders the estate on the west. It is a major research center. Patients from many parts of the world come to Groote Schuur and the most complex heart surgery is per-formed here by teams of specialists.