Newlands Self-Catering

• Newlands Cape Town

Newlands stands as one of Cape Town's more historically rich areas and is said to have been founded as a fruit- and vegetable-growing hamlet to service sailors with the Dutch East India Company as far back as the early 1700s. The main arterial from Cape Town into the southern suburbs, now known as the Eastern Boulevard, was the first road in the Cape to be opened by the settlers and functioned as a wagon trail used by woodcutters to gain access to the slopes of the mountain.

One of its most beloved residents was Lady Anne Barnard who, in 1799, took up residence in a beautiful purpose-built single-storey residence, Paradijs, the site of the luxury Vineyard Hotel and Spa. People resided in the area known as Nieuwland (Newlands) as early as 1700, soon after Adriaan van der Stel, the governor at the time, built a country house there.

Walk down the narrow residential lanes and see the cottages with their distinctive, thick, clay brick walls, and doors that open right on to the street. Now in high demand on the property market, some of these were originally built as slave or brewers quarters to service the farms, estates and brewery. The South African Brewery in Boundary Road is South Africa's oldest commercial brewery, dating back to the mid-1800s.