Sandra Antrobus, just before the year 2000
On the evening of 8 April 2025, at 6:51 pm, I received the dreaded news – my beloved friend and my greatest supporter, Sandra Antrobus, owner of Die Tuishuise and Victoria Hotel, had passed away. I had just visited her in February to ask her opinion about our bid for Cradock to become a Unesco City of Literature, because Sandra was the visionary who helped pioneer the Olive Schreiner Museum, and I knew she would be very excited about our plans. During that last visit, I could see she was very tired, but still very positive that she would overcome her illness. She spoke of all the restoration she still had to supervise on Market Street.
Now, the greatest hotelier in South Africa has signed out in the guestbook of Cradock’s Victoria Hotel and checked out of Die Tuishuise.
I know there are many who will ask about Sol Kerzner. But I’m not talking of that kind of hotelier, who has billions of dollars to create the greatest hotels in the world. I am talking about family-owned hotels, built from nothing more than tenacity and vision – and a bit of money. For years, I wondered who the greatest hotelier was between David Rawdon of Lord Milner, Matjiesfontein, fame, who hails from the same family who own Rawdons Hotel in Nottingham Road, and Sandra Antrobus of Die Tuishuise, Cradock, fame. To my mind, these are the two personalities who created something that will outlive both of them.
Iris, named after Iris Vaughan
Often, I would ask Sandra about how it had come to be that she had opened Die Tuishuise. I always assumed that she had first owned Victoria Hotel and, in order to preserve her investment, had steadily bought up all the houses in Market Street, which looked sad and forlorn, having known better owners once upon a time. But, after years, she told me that she had actually bought the Victoria Hotel only at the dawn of democracy in 1994. The first house that she had bought and restored in the street that is today known as Die Tuishuise, was Victoria House in 1989, which lies directly opposite the foyer of the Victoria Hotel, which dates back to the 1860s, making it one of the oldest hotels in South Africa. Tony Jackman, in an earlier article, remarked that in the early 1990s, he stayed in Die Opstal, which was then one of six Tuishuise owned by Sandra. Dean Allen wrote that in 1983, five historic cottages in Market Street were about to be demolished. Thanks to Sandra, these beautiful houses were saved from the bulldozers. Thanks to the vision of Sandra, Cradock can now lay claim to one the finest architecturally preserved streets in all of South Africa, and for that we owe her a debt of gratitude.
Sandra with my daughter Kiara, decades ago
My family and I have known Sandra, her late husband, Michael, and her daughters, Lisa and Cherie, for almost 30 years. What few people know is that I first offered the Book Town concept to Sandra. It was in Market Street that I first glimpsed the architecture of what South Africa’s first Book Town should look like. However, I think that for once, this indomitable woman found the idea too daunting.
Maybe it was the fact that she had passed up the opportunity for Cradock to become Africa’s first Book Town that made her agree to the Schreiner Festival two years after I started Book Town Richmond and BookBedonnerd. Because God alone knows, everyone else said it would fail. Not only did she agree to hosting the festival, she agreed to host all the writers for free at Die Tuishuise. Sandra knew the value of deferred gratification. Of playing the long game.
When I approached her almost a decade later with the dream of an Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée, she did not hesitate for one moment, never thinking that the new festival would compete with the Schreiner Festival. I think the Afrikaans blood within her understood the need for a festival with a stronger focus on Afrikaans, in a town that is overwhelmingly Afrikaans.
And then, about a year before her death, I approached Sandra with the mad idea to apply for Unesco City of Literature status for Cradock. Even though cancer was beginning to gain the upper hand over her, she and her daughter Lisa worked tirelessly to get the community behind the project. She sensed that this could be a game changer for her beloved home town, and she knew that with two literary festivals, a literary museum and the Olive Schreiner grave being such a rite of passage for writers and academics, Cradock had “good bones” for such a bid. And right until the bid was submitted, she would help conceptualise projects from her home in Breë Street, dreaming of the day she would overcome the cancer.
My daughter enjoying Sandra's vision
When I look back at her life and her legacy that is Die Tuishuise and at David Rawdon’s legacy of Matjiesfontein, I realise that they came to their respective projects with very different trajectories. David Rawdon came from a family with deep roots in the hospitality industry. He rescued Matjiesfontein from rural decline and created an oasis in the middle of a desert for weary travellers traversing the sun-scorched Karoo – at a time before cars had air-conditioning. He was the Laird of Matjiesfontein from 1968 to 2010. He also created Lanzerac in Stellenbosch, the Marine Hotel in Hermanus and, of course, Rawdon’s Hotel in Nottingham Road. In Matjiesfontein, he also created a railway museum, the Marie Rawdon Museum, as well as a transport museum.
“All my hotels have been important, exciting and different, but Matjiesfontein, which was a real struggle, is probably closest to my heart because I hope it will go on forever,” remarked Rawdon. To consolidate his dream, he has placed the entire village in an educational trust, with his two nephews and younger brother, Benjamin, as trustees.
All of this is very impressive. But one must remember that David Rawdon came from a family with money. He always had his parents and his brother offering financial support. And the Marine was a going concern. Sandra Antrobus came from far humbler beginnings. She was the wife of a farmer, Michael Antrobus.
Michael and Sandra Antrobus with daughter Lisa Antrobus-Ker in 2010 at the first Olive Schreiner Festival
However, that last sentence is doing a disservice to Michael. Michael Antrobus was a farmer in the mould of an Etienne Leroux – although, unlike Leroux, he actually farmed and was a leading light in agriculture. Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit, the greatest travel journalists of the Karoo, describe Michael as follows:
Over the years and during all manner of extended road trips and local adventures together, Michael became a special mentor to us. There was so much going on in his head. He could recite poetry from Guy Butler, he could name the geological layers and special qualities of the Karoo Supergroup, he knew the arcane names of fossils, he told us not only about the grasses but about their various uses, and he pointed out the palatable bossies in the veld. We called him a philosopher-farmer.
Like David Rawdon, Sandra Antrobus had a flair for interior decorating, and her culinary prowess even saw her featured on BBC television. In the early days, my wife and I were served breakfast by Sandra and Lisa when they had just bought the Victoria Hotel. And I can attest to the fact that Sandra’s food was some of the finest I have ever tasted.
At this point, I think I must mention why Sandra’s legacy will outlive David Rawdon’s. Die Tuishuise and Victoria Hotel is a family-run enterprise. Lisa has her mother’s drive. Sandra’s other daughter hides out in the kitchen. Lisa’s husband, David, ensures that breakfasts run smoothly, and when the kitchen is busy he is not averse to serving guests. Thus, Die Tuishuise is a family-run business. They live in the town. Matjiesfontein operates via remote control.
Karoo morning, named Guy Butler, as it was the title of his autobiography
But in the literary life of South Africa, Sandra Antrobus stands head and shoulders above anyone else. She played a pivotal role in the founding of the Olive Schreiner Museum in 1986. She was responsible for the period decoration of the museum. She must have possessed a literary heart, because many of the Tuishuise are named after the regions of famous writers, such as Olive Schreiner, Etienne van Heerden, Guy Butler and Iris Vaughan. She also decorated Doornkop in the Mountain Zebra National Park, which was the setting for the filming of The story of an African farm. She can single-handedly lay claim to being the person under whose loving hand the Schreiner Festival as well as the Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée were raised – and they continue to flourish.
But it is the fact that she rescued an entire street from economic decline that is undoubtedly Sandra’s greatest legacy. As anyone who has tried (and failed) to restore an old Karoo house will attest, it is not a job for sissies. But to painstakingly restore 30 such houses – that is the stuff of fairytales. Sandra Antrobus must also have created an entire ecosystem for carpenters and handymen and painters in Cradock to replace the ugly steel-framed windows with sash windows, to source sash windows, to solve the riddle of damp in so many of these old houses. To retain the old wooden floors, when so many others in the Karoo have been ripped out. The beauty of these old Karoo homes could make a tidy profit if stripped. No, Sandra Antrobus, née Moolman, was not only an evangelist for literature in the Karoo, but a champion of Karoo architecture and the preservation of our beautiful old buildings in the Karoo. And having stayed in every Tuishuis in Market Street, I can tell you that no one – absolutely no one – could make a weathered old carpet look like a work of art on those sparkling Oregon pine floors as Sandra could. And the beauty of it all is that she was self-taught. In my book, that is one of the things that sets her apart from David Rawdon, as great as he was. She did not go and study how to be a hotelier at a fancy European school like David Rawdon did.
Many will say, but how can you compare Lanzerac and the Marine Hotel and Rawdons with Die Tuishuise? The difference is that David viewed those hotels as businesses. For Sandra, Die Tuishuise was a vocation, as Matjiesfontein was a labour of love for David. And so, one must ultimately compare Matjiesfontein with Die Tuishuise.
Classics
And, in my humble estimation, it took greater vision to create Die Tuishuise from absolutely nothing. In the case of Matjiesfontein, the blueprint already existed. The Scotsman James Logan had already built the Lord Milner Hotel in 1899. The village already had a reputation for being a Victorian Spa, an oasis in the desert, and a gathering for the rich and famous 70 years before David Rawdon bought the entire village.
Sandra Antrobus had no such blueprint. Because of her founding role with the Schreiner Museum, she would have to drive up and down Market Street, home of Die Tuishuise. And it was during those frequent trips that something in her must have stirred. Because who would see in that street of houses, which had known better days – far better days – the makings of what today is known as Die Tuishuise, the very bedrock of tourism in Cradock? Only a visionary. That visionary went by the name of Sandra Antrobus, whom I have been proud to call my friend and greatest supporter for the last 30 years.
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The post South Africa’s greatest hotelier has checked out appeared first on LitNet.