New Frontiers

This garden cottage in the Cape Winelands honours its past with sentimental touches, but thanks to its functional design it firmly looks to the future

- VICKI SLEET

Pressing pause on the patio

Peet and MJ Hunt with their children. Situated adjacent to their own home, the cottage is a perfectly proportioned sanctuary with a slew of thoughtful design details that embrace old and new. The cottage has a 100 m² indoor footprint, so the partially covered outdoor patio creates welcome extra living space and an opportunity to maximise outdoor entertaining. The foldaway steel shutters provide both privacy and shade without the constraints of permanent walls or brickwork. The narrow workbench and worn garden chairs tap into a rustic sensibility that designer Charlotte Collins effortlessly combines with modern touches. The traditional red brickwork is another detail that embraces old-school design while used in a modern way.

The small town of Stellenbosch is the second oldest in South Africa and it is unusual to still find purely residential properties in the heart of the oak-lined central historical district, where some buildings are centuries old. But when Peet and Mary-Jane (MJ) Hunt discovered their neighbouring property was on the market, it was sold to them with a particular proviso from the original owner of forty years.

"The owner was only willing to sell it to us if we promised not to develop it or resell it to the commercial developers in town. This suited us perfectly since we also wanted to keep the street strictly residential and, of course, it was wonderful that we're right next door. She was happy about our plan to construct a cottage, which we wanted to turn into someplace guests or my folks can stay when they come to visit, explains MJ who met Peet while they were students at the town's university.

Let's make tea