House and Garden – February 2013
Living history
TEXT JULIA FREEMANTLE
A chic update at Vergelegen Estate’s private wing combines all the best of modern luxury with the height of a heritage that spans over two centuries.
Modernising a heritage home is never an easy task. When it happens to be a house as prominent as Somerset West’s Vergelegen Estate, it requires a particularly deft touch. Designer John Jacob was commissioned by Don Tooth, the Managing Director of Vergelegen and given the go-ahead for the project by the owners Anglo American, to take the interior of the private wing – an extension built in the 1930s by architect Percy Walgate under Lady Phillips ownership – to a level of luxury, aesthetically palatable to its present-day visitors, without destroying its sense of history.
H&G: Working on a house as prominent as Vergelegen must have come with its own set of pressures…
John Jacob: It’s such an iconic example of Cape Dutch architecture – definitely one of South Africa’s most important houses – so this project was all about finding a happy medium between progression and preservation. We had to keep in mind the history of the house when conceptualising the look – everything had to be appropriate to a house of its stature in terms of provenance and significance. But comfort and convenience were important because this section of the house is the private wing where guests, often high-profile dignitaries and occasionally even royalty make use of the facilities including Prince Charles, Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall and even Queen Elizabeth. So it had to achieve a certain level of luxury.
Luxury these days goes hand in hand with technology, which is surely inherently at odds with the house itself.
JJ: Completely. On the one hand you have old yellowwood and terracotta floors and this incredible thatch and then on the other you have to think about WiFi and TV’s and heated towel rails. Those elements were non-negotiable but we found clever ways to make them discrete – audiovisual equipment tucked into custom servers and cupboards and heated towel rails in an aged copper finish. You can’t see any of it beyond the absolute essentials and I think it makes for a very authentic experience.
If I didn’t know better I’d think it was untouched architecturally.
JJ: A few people who have visited the house have said that, and it’s the highest praise I could get, because we did some fairly extensive reworking of certain sections of the house to make the spaces more conducive to modern living. We gutted the bathrooms and made those layouts more rational and simple, And the entrance hall and adjoining dining room, which were both originally much narrower, we widened to make them more gracious. This required moving one wall and removing another, which we replaced with a screen designed to mimic the kind of partition you might have found between the voorkamer and agterkamer of a Cape Dutch house. The effect is now much more inspiring and authentic looking.
It really has a definite sense of arrival.
JJ: Well there wasn’t a sense of arrival before – the gorgeous facade gave way to a poky low-ceilinged passage that had anticlimax written all over it. It was lacking that powerful first impression, which the structural changes have accomplished, helped by an exquisite wall tapestry we borrowed from Anglo American in Johannesburg, both giving it the gravitas needed to live up to the preceding gardens.
The gardens are much loved. Did they have any bearing on the design?
JJ: We definitely tried to draw them in Mirrored panels in the passage door were positioned there to reflect the ponds, and a trompe de l’oeil of the Helderberg Mountains in the dinning room – which looks onto he white garden – is a nod to the location. One of the remarkable things about the estate is how beautifully it’s looked after. Any time you go there you’ll find the gardens immaculate and rooms filled with flowers picked from the estate, brass polished, floors shining. There is a strong sense of the importance of details and preserving daily traditions.
Something that doubtless has been taken seriously on board by the owners.
JJ: They didn’t just want to decorate it. They had a real desire to add value to the interiors and leave behind pieces for posterity that would add to the collection. So I called in Cape furniture experts Piér and Jo-Marie Rabe and Deon Viljoen to source appropriate, complementary items, along with the custom pieces I made to suit the spaces and fit in with the feel.
There must have been some real treasures in the house.
JJ: Artwork mainly. I moved some from the main house that worked particularly well with the new design language. I also found an amazing painting hidden under a bed! And some yellowwood pieces, which we consolidated in one of the bedrooms for a more maxed – out modern look. There were also some other lovely details I played with – like the blue-and-white tiles around the sitting-room fireplace, which I complemented with Qing dynasty plates. On the whole I’ve tried to really accentuate the elements that make the house what it is – while adding a freshness that makes it more relatable for now.