Here’s the thing: when you choose to stay in a place like St Andrews Church- a place laden with history and tradition- you get curious. It’s impossible, surrounded by the high ceiling, sandstone architecture, light from the stain-glass windows filtering in from above and the Drakensberg stretching across the horizon, not to wonder just how this blissful retreat came to be.

The little stone church was built in 1906 next to the picturesque Giant’s Castle road, about 10 km’s from Mooi River on a piece of land donated by John Evan Oats. If you feel like you have stepped out of South Africa into 20Th Century England, you are not alone.

The main motivation behind the construction of the church was Weenen County College, which moved into the surrounding Highlands to escape the Anglo-Boer war. Considering the expanse of the bloodshed, they were not alone. In the previous century, it was both time consuming and dangerous for the local farmers to make a twelve-kilometer journey to the nearest church at St John’s every Sunday. So, in a truly devout fashion, around 1901 the community came together to “plant” a new place of worship right in their own backyard.

Mr. Percy Simmons, a prominent farmer in the district, designed the church. He fashioned the nave, chancel, transepts, and bell tower after another chapel in his town of birth, Hadlow Kent in the UK (did I mention how it feels like a quaint English town? Complete with the trimmed hedges and blossom trees? I think I have). The dressed stone was donated by Billy Woods- another local farmer- and a man named Mr. Nelson was commissioned to lay it with his sons of Hlatikulu. This took over two years to complete.The exquisite carpentry and arched beams, the stained glass windows and all the features that raise up St Andrews are stories in themselves and worthy subjects of perhaps a future blog but which nevertheless must account for the years before the church was finally consecrated.

The consecration of St Andrew’s finally took place in 1906 in front of a congregation of 130 merry souls and was led by the then Bishop of Natal: the Right Reverend Samuel Baines.

A tablet with the names of all the former students of the Weenen County College who lost their lives in World War I can be found in the chapel and the little graveyard guards memorials to many of the great pioneers of the community.

Fast-forward one hundred years or so, and the doors of St Andrews were indefinitely closed due to dwindling attendance and a shift in demographics. With time, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the aging building and protect this local landmark from irreparable damage. In another ten years, however, hope came in the form of Jen and Paul Hindle. The couple worked tirelessly to save the chapel from its imminent deterioration. Although, it was clearly a labor of love if the amount of attention to detail and dedication to its original construction is anything to go by. In 2013, the Gothic doors were reopened as a repurposed self-catering lodge. St Andrews Retreat was born. Or reborn, I should stay, because as much as the church has been repaired, it is undoubtedly the same place that worshippers of the Kamberg Farmlands flocked to for a hundred years.

Hannah George, 2018