The Zuurberg Inn is very much a part of Port Elizabeth's history, firstly because of its situation as a resting place for travellers on the road to and from the north, and then, before the advent of fast cars and aeroplanes and week-ends at Sun City, it was a perfect distance away from the town for a week-end visit by train or, later, in the family Ford.
The Inn is on the farm Doorn Nek, originally part of the Uitenhage Districts and later part of Alexandria, so it is for references to the farm that one must look to begin with. We are told that is was on this land that Andries Stockenstorm, Landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, and some of his party were killed in December 1811 during the Frontier War. A post was probably established here when the war was over and the relics of it can be seen around on the the Inn's fireplaces.
According to a list of his property, sold after his death, the owner of the farm until 1838 was the Malay Port Elizabethan, Fortuin Weys, and a list of Field Cornetcies of 1849 gives the owner as one William Matthews.
In 1848 a dramatic change in the story of Doorn Nek began with the building of the pass through the Zuurberg to provide a direct route from Port Elizabeth to Graaff-Reinet, Somerset East, Cradock and Colesberg. The pass was commenced by Henry Fancourt White, who has close ties with Port Elizabeth's history, and finished by his successor, Matthew Woodfield, also with Port Elizabeth connections. The pass was opened to the public in 1858 and cost £1654 14s 1d.
During the Smithfield gold rush of 1854 a D. Harvey offered a half-way house - half-way between Port Elizabeth and Somerset East - at Doorn Nek, but it wasn't until 1861 that the story of the Inn really began, when John Matthews, the Zuurberg Hotel and Sanatorium already had a respectable, family-holiday aspect, brought both by fashion and the railway.
Various owners and managers followed, but a pattern had been established. Visitors came for weekends or for longer and sometimes to convalesce. They travelled by train as far as Coerney where transport met them and conveyed them up the pass to the Inn. Tennis, quoits, croquet and golf were available, as well as pleasant walks. Special concessions were sometimes offered on rail fares over week-ends. The Anglo-Boer War brought a temporary halt to the stream of visitors. For one thing a pass was needed during the later part of the war for any Port Elizabethan wanting to go further afield than Zwartkops, and at the beginning of 1901 the owner;s horses were all commandeered and he could no longer transport his guests from Coerney. Smuts and his commando came as far as Kirkwood and the Kariega Valley, but during their few days on the Zuurberg were not in the vicinity on the Inn.
Around this time the existing Inn was burned down and the property was acquired by F.W. Bracken, an experienced hotelier who had owned the Imperial Hotel at the top of Russell Road and the Central Hotel before buying the Zuurberg Sanatorium, a "great structure, superior to anything in the Midlands." The genial Mr Bracken and after him his son, Reg Bracken, ran the Inn until 1946. Modern conveniences arrived bit by bit: electric bells, shower baths, running water in the bedrooms. A large L-shaped double-storey building was erected behind the familiar roadside part, and seen for the first time in photographs gives quite a shock. The Brackens sold the Inn to a group of Port Elizabeth businessmen and some time after a serious fire occurred, presumably the cause of the disappearance of the large annex.
The Inn no longer has a main road past it's front door, in fact the old pass is a quiet country road nowadays, with the speeding traffic following newer, tarred roads and the once bare hills around the Inn are covered with trees, but though altered, this place is as beautiful and memorable to us as it has been to visiting Bayonians for generations.
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| Zuurberg Inn front verandah 2014 |
Sources: CApe Government Gazettes, Eastern Province HErald, Advertiser, Port ELizabeth Directories
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