Book Review

Our blockhouse heritage

Book Title: Anglo-Boer War Blockhouses: A Field Guide

Author: Simon C. Green

ISBN: 978-1-9284-5561-5

Publisher: Porcupine Press, Johannesburg, 2022, R765*

*Book price at time of review

Review Title: Our blockhouse heritage

Reviewer:
André Wessels¹

Affiliation:
¹Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Corresponding author: André Wessels, wesselsa@ufs.ac.za

How to cite this book review: Wessels, A. “Our blockhouse heritage.” New Contree 91 (2024): a265. https://doi.org/10.4102/nc.v91.265

Copyright Notice: © 2024. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

From around August 1900 until the cessation of hostilities on 31 May 1902, the British Army in South Africa built at least 9500 blockhouses (including some 450 stone and/or masonry blockhouses) during the guerrilla phase (March 1900–May 1902) of the Anglo-Boer War from 1899 to 1902. The blockhouse lines – either built along the railway lines to protect the British lines of communication or built across the veld to divide the war zone into more manageable ‘cages’ in order to try and trap and destroy the mobile and mostly elusive Boer commandos – covered about 6000 km. The blockhouse project was expensive (approximately £1 million; i.e. more than R3.2 billion in today’s South African money) and did not always have the desired results, but it did frustrate the Boers and – together with all the other British counterguerrilla measures – contributed towards the eventual Boer surrender.

In 2020, Simon Green (a former British Army officer, who retired in 2006 after some 30 years of military service, and settled in South Africa to pursue his passion for military history and writing) published a definitive study on British Anglo-Boer fortifications, namely Anglo-Boer War blockhouses: A military engineer’s perspective. He has now written a companion to this book. In his latest publication, he reviews a number of key blockhouses left standing in South Africa.

Green provides a brief overview of the history of the building of the blockhouses in the course of the war (pp. 11–15) and then describes and discusses a total of 72 blockhouses (cf. also the map on pp. 6–7), province by province. Each discussion includes an indication of the accessibility of the structure, a Global Positioning System (GPS) reference, as well as an indication of the condition of the blockhouse.

The blockhouses that are discussed include examples of what Green describes as the ‘South African family tree of blockhouses’ namely, the temporary blockhouses (i.e. corrugated iron), and the large and small rectangular structures, and octagonal and round blockhouses, which Major SR Rice (part of the Royal Engineers) designed. Also included in the ‘South African family tree of blockhouses’ are the permanent blockhouses (i.e. masonry, stone or concrete), and the round, octagonal, hexagonal and rectangular structures, the hybrid designs, and the blockhouses that Major-General Sir Elliot Wood designed.

The blockhouses that are described include those at Aliwal North and Stormberg in the Eastern Cape, Harrismith and Jacobsdal in the Free State, Hekpoort and Krugersdorp in Gauteng, Bergville in KwaZulu-Natal, Bela Bela (Warmbad) and Makhado (Louis Trichardt) in Limpopo, Middelburg and Ermelo in Mpumalanga, Daniëlskuil, Modder River and Noupoort in the Northern Cape, Broederstroom and Kommando Nek in the North West Province, and at Graafwater, Krom River, Montagu and Wellington in the Western Cape.

Throughout, the author – where possible – also refers the reader to other places of historical interest that can be visited in the vicinity of the blockhouses, including museums, internment (concentration) camp sites, battlefields and monuments. There is also a blockhouse directory, listing 138 blockhouses (pp. 334–342). The book indeed has much to offer for anyone interested in military and cultural history, architecture, and/or heritage studies.

Anglo-Boer War blockhouses: A field guide is a first-of-its-kind guide, which can either be used for virtual visits to learn more about the military structures that were erected by the British Army across the South African war zone during the guerrilla phase of the Anglo-Boer War or to visit some of the remaining blockhouses in the field. Hopefully this excellent and user friendly publication will succeed in its main aim, namely to put the blockhouse sites on the battlefield tour map, and to encourage professional tour guides and amateurs alike to explore these places and structures in detail.

The blockhouse field guide acts as a record of the current condition of the remaining blockhouses, all sadly having been ravaged by human destruction (vandalism), a lack of maintenance, and the inexorable effects of weather and the passage of time. Some 30 of the blockhouses are protected by government legislation, but this, to a large extent, has proved to be ineffective, as we are failing to preserve this aspect of our shared national heritage. After all, the blockhouse guards comprised not only white British Army officers and men, but indeed also black, brown and white local men who joined the British forces in the course of the war.

Hopefully, members of all cultural groups in South Africa will in the run-up to the 125th anniversary of the Anglo-Boer War (an anniversary that will commence in October 2024) take greater interest in this most devastating conflict in the history of South Africa, read more about its causes, its course, and the consequences it had for all South Africans, and will visit Anglo-Boer War (as well as so many other) places of historical interest. For this purpose, Green’s books on the blockhouses should be kept in one’s car (or tour bus).

Simon Green’s Anglo-Boer War blockhouses: A field guide is a well-researched book that deserves to be used in exploring an important and fascinating aspect of South Africa’s chequered history. The publication is highly recommended.