Vergelegen is one of South Africa's best-known estates and has strange tales to tell.
Like all good stories, it is interspersed with supposition and myth, dark deeds, great acts of love and triumph over adversity.
It is known that 48 years after Jan van Riebeek, Van der Stel built the Vergelegen homestead, a tannery, workshop, wine and grain stores, a slave lodge and a waterwheel to grind grain. He planted orchards and orange groves. His vineyards contained 500 000 vine stocks. He established 18 cattle stations with 1 000 head of cattle and 1 800 sheep.
Willem Adriaan, disgraced governor, returned to Holland, the estate was divided in four and auctioned. The Company ordered the main house be demolished. There is doubt as to whether this order was carried out.
The owner of the portion of the farm on which the building stood was Barend Gildenhuijs, whose brother-in-law Jacobus van der Heijden had bought the neighbouring portion which now forms part of Lourensford Estate and Erinvale. His widow married a German sailor, Michiel Otto, and soon rumours of buried treasure on Vergelegen emerged.
The treasure is said to have come from the Schonenberg, wrecked off Agulhas in 1722. It is said three Hottentots Holland farmers conspired with the Schonenberg's captain to beach the ship and steal her cargo. They trekked to Agulhas and lit a signal fire on a hill. The captain beached the ship and the crew waded ashore. The captain sent most of the crew overland to inform authorities, while he and his cronies remained with the stranded ship. Soon afterwards the three farmers arrived on the beach and the cargo was quickly loaded onto their ox wagons.
The valuable cargo was hauled to Vergelegen and buried, allegedly in the orchard. The slaves who buried it were shot and the only man who knew where it was hidden was later found dead in the orchard.
In the late 19th century a large copper pot of a type apparently used on board ships operating for the East India companies to cook rice, and a ship's bell, were dug up by farm workers. A servant girl claimed her grandmother as a child had hidden in the pot when the other slaves were killed.
In 1798 Marthinus Wilhelmus Theunissen acquired Vergelegen and it stayed in his family for a century. Marthinus was a soldier, politician and farmer. It was his letter to Lord Charles Somerset that resulted in the village being named Somerset West.
In 1899 the Theunissens sold to Sir James Sivewright, and the estate's fortunes improved. He sold to Samuel Kerr, an Irishman who had profited in the diamond fields. His money didn't buy taste and his programme of modernisation amounted to vandalism.
Randlord and Jameson Raid plotter Sir Lionel Phillips bought the estate for his fractious, art-loving wife Lady Phillips. Florrie Phillips seemed determined to substantially improve on their humble beginnings. She took ownership of Vergelegen in 1917 and oversaw much restoration but would not plant vineyards, saying "there is too much bad wine made in South Africa already". But when she died there was no cash in her estate.
The Barlow family then ran Vergelegen until 1987, when it was bought by Anglo American Farms. Since then, Vergelegen has undergone a renaissance.