Stuurmansfontein: a corbelled house in the Karoo

The sun had set and we were sipping wine and eating farm bread by candlelight at Stuurmansfontein near Carnarvon – a corbelled house in the Karoo, now an unusual guesthouse. It felt as if we’d fallen through a wormhole into the past.

There was old wooden furniture, satin-finished and honey-coloured with the patina of long years. There were deep windowsills confirming the thickness and cooling capacity of the stone walls. In the kitchen, a Dover stove (with a gas hotplate for modern conve...