Nothing puts a town on the world map like a royal visit, even in modern times. And back in the day, Stellenbosch was a pretty popular destination whenever British royals landed on South African shores.
The first royal presence to grace the humble hamlet of Stellenbosch, yet already a noted oak-lined beauty with great food and wine, came over 150 years ago in the 1860s. The second son of Queen Victoria and her German consort, Prince Albert, did the honours. His Royal Highness Prince Alfred the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gothe – then still the Duke of Edinburgh – was at the Cape for the official start of the construction of the main building in the Cape Town Harbour, an important port on the Empire’s map. It is now part of Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, named after him and his long-reigning mother. While in the region, his party decided to visit Stellenbosch. Sadly, there is no record of his thoughts on the town, but we could presume the royal visit did not take place just because the prince needed to fill his diary.
A few decades later, in the period between 1924 and 1931, Prince Alfred’s sister, HRH Princess Alice and her husband Alexander Cambridge, the first Earl of Athlone, frequented Stellenbosch. At the time the Earl was Governor of the Cape Colony. They seemed to have been rather enamoured with Stellenbosch, since they visited quite often, especially during the harvest festival and the market held on the banks of the Eerste River. They wrote fondly of the quality of the produce they received from friends who were well-to-do farmers outside of town. Princess Alice would go on to enjoy such longevity that she appears on the christening photographs of Queen Elizabeth’s first grandchild, Peter Philips, in 1977.
The most illustrious royal visit, however, came shortly after the Second World War in 1947 when Alice’s crowned nephew came to town. That year, His Majesty King George VI and his family undertook an extended tour of Southern Africa. It’s now a famous anecdote of history that their daughter Elizabeth – later Queen Elizabeth II – was whisked along on the marathon trip in the vain hope that she might get over her infatuation with the dashing Philip Mountbatten, a naval lieutenant ‘of no fixed address’ (by his own admission). He was snubbed by the British royals for descending from the lost Greek Crown, even though his royal blood was thicker than any of the Windsors’ and he stemmed from so many royal lines that his DNA would be the only to one day definitively identify the remains of Russian Czar Nicholas II and his murdered family.
The British royal entourage toured the Southern African landscape in the iconic White Train, described as a palace on wheels, that can today be seen at the transport museum in George. On the 20th of February, the King, his Queen – later known as “the Queen Mom” – and princesses Elizabeth and Margaret arrived at Du Toit train station in Stellenbosch. They were driven to Coetzenburg where an adoring crowd of people from all over awaited them. The royals were greeted by officials of the town and the university. A lovely photo of the occasion is kept in the Royal Archives, featuring the royal family on a specially built platform and, in the background, Simon Van Der Stel majestically on his back in the form of Simon’s Mountain.
We’d never know how much Princess Elizabeth was thinking of her beau back in England that day, but she certainly wasn’t planning on letting him go. Shortly after visiting Stellenbosch, she celebrated her 21st birthday in Cape Town and not long after the family arrived back in England, Buckingham Palace announced – on 9 July 1947 – the engagement of the future queen to the man she was so determined to marry. The pair would only get to visit South Africa together almost 50 years later, in 1995, on the official invitation of President Nelson Mandela. After the royal yacht Britannia docked in Simon’s Town, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her beloved consort, HRH Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh, spent six days in and around Cape Town. Very regrettably, they did not afford Stellenbosch another royal visit.
Text: Eduan AJ Naudé | Image: King Charles III 2022
