dress up dinners

Dress code for Friday AND Saturday night dinner's at the Lord Milner Hotel is:

Your Real / Fake heritage.. wie's jou oupagrootjie 

please note All Dinners at the Lord Milner Hotel are dress-code semi formal by hotel regulations 

and take a deep breath while you wait and have a glass of wine.. dont expect the food or service to be what you think it should be... matjies has its own magic*

did you know

We are so very sad that the 5th Show 'n Tell will be happening without the King Of Matjiesfontein. What a big privilege to have know him - a free spirited open hearted fun loving wonder

As a contribution I was planning to have a crown ceremony to David this year.. instead we will dedicate  Show 'n Tell 2010 to him. 

Here are few facts on mr Rawdon

"In the late 1960s, David Rawdon, a hotelier par excellence, whose claim to fame was the establishing of the well-known Lanzerac Hotel in Stellenbosch and the Marina Hotel in Hermanus, purchased Matjiesfontein Village.

 After performing extensive renovations on the hotel, utilising the wealth of antiques gathered during his world travels, Mr. Rawdon re-opened the property in 1970 and renamed it The Lord Milner Hotel."

"His efforts resulted in the village being declared a National Monument in 1979."

 Lanzerac Hotel:  "The good looking and magnetic young David Rawdon could only have dreamt of the success that the Lanzerac Hotel was to enjoy when he opened the door to the public in August 1959. With the help of his mother, Marie Rawdon and hotelier brother, Graham, he’d bought the property for R36 000. He then spent a year of intense renovation and restructuring, turning fowl pens, stables, cow sheds and kraals into fetching bedrooms that for the next 30 odd years beckoned travelers from home and abroad. Rawdon was no modern millionaire hotel magnate - money was in scarce supply and with a small team of builders he designed and oversaw most of the work himself. He went from one auction and yard sale to the next in the neighboring countryside buying up neglected furniture and follies which freshened up into smart period pieces, many of which are still in residence at the hotel today."

Thank you so much for letting us play xxx

Sources:

Heritage org

Lanzerac History

Matjiesfontein

photographs: James Seigel

A dispatch from Matjiesfontein headquaters:
Just a reminder that Matjiesfontein is in fact a declared herritage site which basically means that stuff here is OLD and valuable. The antiques here are real,
so,... basically... treat it with respect.
Tread lightly. Don’t smoke where it tells you not too. Don’t thro uggly butts on the floor. It is plain not cool, In fact its miff.
Over and out.


polaroid by Julia Merrett

Scary, apparently

Who would have thought that the little gem of a sweet-nowhere-one-hotel-half-a-street-town Matjiesfontein is in the top ten scariest places in South Africa! The only thing I was scared of was not having enough fun. Well, some people think otherwise... Matjies has got the chills like The Old Goal, the Africana Museum and the Southern Seas...

"At Matjiesfontein, the Victorian village in the Karoo, the past and the present are inseparably intertwined. So do not be surprised to find that some of the visitors are staying forever. Among these are the spirits of founder Jimmy Logan and Lucy, who has never checked out of her hotel room. Wearing only a negligee, she’s often spotted in the corridor."

hmmmm... put that in your Show an Tell ideas bag.

(Scary places in South Africa)

Organising people

So if you are out and about and want to chat to any of the people who are helping put Matjies together, here we are. On the left is Simon who is in charge of weekend commentary. Nothing else. Marc is next to him and will not always have a cigarette to his mouth. Julia is the main Lady, she is rad and is very organised too. On the far right is Raffa. She is in London and New York, so if you see her, you are seeing things.

Matjies Magnified

Why THEN and why THERE ?
Show 'n Tell falls just before Heritage day ( 24September 2008) and Matjiesfontein is a heritage site..

"David Rawdon, the owner of Matjiesfontein and an avid collector, has established the The Marie Rawdon Museum which houses an eclectic collection of Victoriana. The cellars of the railway station are packed with a fascinating mixture of bygones and real treasure. "

"The apothecary's shop, for example, is complete with Victorian gothic mahogany furniture, apothecary jars with their original contents; and, standing in the same room, an extensive collection of cameras, Magic Lanterns and photographic paraphernalia, all rubbing shoulders with a macabre-looking dentist surgery in one corner and an old cut-throat barber's shop in the other."

Meet Josephina - she is the museum keeper and will charge you R5 to have a snoop around..

By accident came across the wonderful photographs Rose took in Matjiesfontein over the 2007 Show 'n Tell- She has an incredible eye for detail.. .
These were all taken in the Lord Milner Hotel, Matjiesfontein.

Its not just a legend.. The Lord Milner Hotel IS haunted....please mind the ghosts here, they have been around for a loooooooonnnnggg time, and herritage weekend is when they like to play too.... boooohhh hoo
SAT 16h00:
Screening of “The Spirit of a Dessert Fountain”, a documentary on the ghosts of Matjiesfontein. On the ‘Bring ‘n screen’, Royal Lounge
"In this historical and elegant hotel, there are supposedly ghosts and from time to time laughing voices and the clicking of billiard balls can be heard. According to legend, the ghost of the wounded british “Tommy” still visits the town after the Boer War."

A dispatch from Matjiesfontein headquaters:
Just a reminder that Matjiesfontein is in fact a declared herritage site which basically means that stuff here is OLD and valuable. The antiques here are real,
so,... basically... treat it with respect.
Tread lightly. Don’t smoke where it tells you not too. Don’t thro uggly butts on the floor. It is plain not cool, In fact its miff.
Over and out.

Well-known for The Mystery Ghost Bus Tour that he runs in South Africa, Mark Rose-Christie , a serious paranormal researcher of long-standing, states in his own words that "Bulwer and Magaliesburg, along with Matjiesfontein, are South Africa's most haunted villages". Rose-Christie has researched many areas of South Africa and has a knack for investigating paranormal cases.

The Show'N Tell was a toy combination record player and filmstrip viewer manufactured by General Electric from the 1950s to the 1970s.
It resembled a television set, but had a record player on the top. Records and slides were sold for it in combination. One would insert the slide strip into the top and play the record; the record typically told a story, and the slide strip, which projected the images on the screen, would automatically advance to illustrate it.
It also functioned as a standard record player, able to play 16, 33⅓, 45, and 78 RPM records.

From Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia

“Today if one walks in the veld around Matjiesfontein, one can still find rusted bully beef tins left behind by the British troops.”

“When the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, Matjiesfontein served as a command headquarters and "home" to many British officers. This was the furthest north that wives and sweethearts were allowed to travel. Many were seen strolling on the arms of officers and dining in the hotel, which later served as a convalescent hospital for wounded officers. Soldiers are reported to have used the turrets of the hotel as lookout posts and it is said that bands of Boers were often spotted moving through the hills. On the outskirts of the village was a huge remount camp for over 20 000 troops and 10 000 horses was established.
Some crack British regiments were based at Matjiesfontein”
(Quote from a brief history of Matjiesfontein.)

“In 1979, Matjiesfontein was declared a National Heritage Site, a tribute to Jimmy Logan and to David Rawdon whose love and dedication to Matjiesfontein allowed it to live again.”

“There's a little piece of Scotland on the plains of the Great Karoo. Once favoured by princes, dukes and the young Sultan of Zanzibar, it even had its own laird. Its rich history includes murder, mayhem and magic - all woven into a tapestry of gallantry, ghosts, fact and fiction. People vied with each other to visit this arid place where Lord Randolph Churchill "picked bluebells in the hills," and Olive Schreiner, who lived in the village from 1890 to 1892, served dinner to Cecil John Rhodes in a tiny cottage which still stands. Edgar Wallace wrote a poignant piece on the death of Queen Victoria while staying there, and General Haig gave parties in a small mess which had once been a laundry. This tiny cottage can still be seen across the river from the main hotel. Such is Matjiesfontein, once a lonely spot where locals gathered reeds from the banks of the Baviaans River to weave into rush mats. Perhaps it would have meandered quietly down the years in this tranquil way had it not been for the Cape Colonial Railways and a shrewd Scot.”
taken from heritage.org.za

FURTHER INFORMATION
Laingsburg Tourism Bureau
Laingsburg Library
Private Bag X4O BOX 56
LAINGSBURG
6900
SOUTH AFRICA
PHONE AND FAX: +27 (0)23 551 1019