Exploring South Africa town by town: Franschhoek Part 2

Here are some information I got on Franschhoek from Wikipedea.

“Franschhoek (“French Corner”, Dutch spelling before 1947 Fransche Hoek) is a small town in the Western Cape Province and one of the oldest towns of the Republic of South Africa. It is about 75 kilometres from Cape Town and has a population of slightly over 15,000 people.

The valley was originally settled in 1688 by 176 French Huguenot refugees, many of whom were given land by the Dutch government in a valley called Olifantshoek (“Elephants’ corner”), so named because of the elephants that crossed into the valley to calve. The name of the area soon changed to le Coin Français (“the French Corner”), and later to Franschhoek (Dutch for “French Corner”), with many of the settlers naming their new farms after the areas in France from which they came. La Motte, Champagne, La Cotte, Cabrière, La Provence, Bourgogne, La Terra de Luc and La Dauphine were among some of the first established farms — most of which still retain their original Cape Dutch farm houses today. These farms have grown into renowned wineries. Many of the surnames in the area are of French origin, e.g. Du Toit, Marais, Du Plessis, Malan, Malherbe, and Joubert.

The Cape Dutch architecture in much of the village is unspoilt, as restrictions have been placed on the extent of renovations and new construction in order to preserve the spirit of the original settlers to the area.

In 1904 a 27 km railway line was built between Paarl and Franschhoek to serve as an alternative to ox drawn carts for farmers wanting to get their produce to market. Steam locomotives operated along the route until diesel locomotives took over in the 1970s and then, in the 1990s, as the need for rail transport decreased, service along the railway line was discontinued. The railway line was reinstated in 2012 by a private operator and now sees service as the Franschhoek Wine Tram a tourism project utilizing a newly constructed tram modeled after the open-sided Brill Trams of circa 1890 to transport tourists between wine estates in the area.”

Some of the photo’s I took the day we visited Franschhoek for the morning. Our main reason for visiting was the chocolate factory and I only took photo’s of the main street and shops nearby. On my next visit I’ll sure to stop by the Huguenot Monument and other museums in this beautiful town.