Blockhouses that look like fanciful little castles of the South African War in 1899-1902

They were all intended to keep the ever-mobile Boers from accessing British supply lines.

On a road trip through South Africa you'll often come across these little castles,

standing in a field or on the outskirts of a town or on a hill overlooking a highway.

Life in a blockhouse generally consisted of a few British soldiers under a hot tin roof.

More than 90% of their time was spent in boredom.

The soldiers kept themselves busy with gardening and the cleaning of equipment.

Then there was that 10% of white-hot action, when the Boers came visiting.

For the purposes of this blog post a 'masonry blockhouse' is a structure of mortared

stonework or concrete, one to three storeys in height, with a roof of timber and

corrugated iron, with rifle ports, windows and doors protected by loopholed

steel plates and with or without steel machicouli galleries.

A machicouli had a ‎Post-medieval use for through objects onto the enemy

It took 30 Royal Engineers all of 30 days, on average, to cut the stone and
construct one at a cost of £900.

Royal Engineers built a total of 441 masonry blockhouses through out South Africa during the War.

We would like to introduce you to the Reservoir Blockhouse at Harrismith

The Reservoir Blockhouse exhibit a gabled roof, with vertical corrugated cladding on the gable ends and the roof is cut back over the machicouli galleries. There is loopholes on each side of the entrance at first floor level. The small monopitch roofs and vertical cladding covering the galleries on the Reservoir Blockhouse at Harrismith represent another original variant to the design.

The oldest photo we could find of the Reservoir Blockhouse after completion

A photo taken during the War of the Blockhouse and its occupants.
They kept animals for companion and planted gardens
You can see this soldier and his dog

Today the blockhouse is a National Monument and it can be reached by foot in the

Platberg Eco Reserve. It is almost a 2 km walk