The Englishman's Grave

‘Brave and True’ reads his epitaph, in a quiet spot at the top of the cederberg's Pakhuis Pass  that makes his final resting place. PAUL MORRIS stops to find out more.

- Paul Morris

The Englishman’s Grave stands on high ground next to the quiet Pakhuis Pass. Enclosed by a wrought-iron fence and marked by a military headstone, it overlooks the rocky, khaki-clad Cederberg Mountains a couple of hours’ drive north of Cape Town.

Somewhere below the road are the trenches dug by British soldiers in the gravelly mountainside during the Second Anglo-Boer War. I’ve heard that time and weather have all but erased them. But I can’t look for them today because I am travelling with dogs and they are not allowed on that land. Anyway, there is little there now but ghosts and the breeze. And I’ve already found other defensive positions at the southern end of the range. 

My visit is in the winter and the light is soft and pleasant. The Englishman who lies in the grave nearby died in the summer and would have known the dry, weighty Cederberg heat sucking the moisture from his body. He’d have known the hard light turning everything to monochrome.

His name was Lieutenant Graham Vinicombe Winchester Clowes of the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders. His unit was here to stop Boer guerrillas from infiltrating the Cape Colony. He was killed in a skirmish on 30 January 1901.

I have driven from Cape Town through the pretty, fruit-growing valley that surrounds the little town of Ceres. For several hours I made the journey along the 4x4 route, through the isolated hamlet of Eselbank and on to the Moravian mission village of Wuppertal with its pretty white church. The 4x4 route is a little misleading as I meet a crowded, rusting Corolla crawling along in the other direction. I wonder how much of its undercarriage has been left behind on the rocky track.