Baardskeerdersbos (), also Baardscheerders Bosch in

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

and locally known as B'bos, is a village in the

Overberg __NOTOC__ Overberg is a region in South Africa to the east of Cape Town beyond the Hottentots-Holland mountains. It lies along the Western Cape Province's south coast between the Cape Peninsula and the region known as the Garden Route in the e ...

region of the

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. According to the 2011 census it has a population of 103 residents.

Geography

Baardskeerdersbos is located east of

Gansbaai Gansbaai (Dutch/Afrikaans for "bay of geese," sometimes referred to as Gans Bay) is a fishing town and tourist destination in the Overberg District Municipality, Western Cape, South Africa. It is known for its dense population of great white shar ...

on the Gansbaai– Elim–

Bredasdorp Bredasdorp is a town in the Southern Overberg region of the Western Cape, South Africa, and the main economic and service hub of that region. It lies on the northern edge of the Agulhas Plain, about south-east of Cape Town and north of Cape Agu ...

road. It lies on the southern slopes of a mountain called Perdekop ("''Horse Hill''"), at the base of the Boskloof ("''Forest Gorge''") through which a small river flows south off the mountain. Just south of the village the Boesmansrivier ("''

Bushman The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. They are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200 ...

's River''") flows from east to west; the Boskloof stream flows into this river.

History

The first reference to this area by Europeans dates to 1660, when

Jan van Riebeek Johan Anthoniszoon "Jan" van Riebeeck (21 April 1619 – 18 January 1677) was a Dutch navigator, ambassador and colonial administrator of the Dutch East India Company. Life Early life Jan van Riebeeck was born in Culemborg on 21 April ...

sent an expedition to explore the Overberg. The farm "Baarscheerders Bosch" number 213 in the

registration district, which included the village and the surrounding farmland and hillside, was surveyed for a Phillip Fourie Senior in 1831; that original farm has since been subdivided considerably into separate farms,

smallholding A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technolo ...

s and plots.Original land grant diagram for farm Baarscheerders Bosch No. 213 Bredasdorp, Surveyor-General Cape Town diagra
571/1831
(TIFF). The current church in Baardskeerdersbos was built in 1921 and is a National Monument. For a long time the village remained rural and undisturbed, but recently it has been discovered as a quiet getaway particularly for residents of

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

; several new houses have been built, and several more renovated.

Name

The name "Baardskeerdersbos" in

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

or "Baardscheerders Bosch" in the original

literally means "Beard Shaver's Forest". The accepted explanation for this name is that a species of

solifuge Solifugae is an order of arachnids known variously as solifuges, sun spiders, camel spiders, and wind scorpions. The order includes more than 1,000 described species in about 147 genera. Despite the common names, they are neither true spiders (or ...

inhabits the area, and that this arachnid is referred to as a "beard shaver" because it cuts hair to use for nest-building. The well-known cartographer and writer Peter Slingsby wrote a book entitled "Beard Shaver’s Bush: Place Names in the Cape" () which discusses the origin of this and many other place names.

References

{{Overberg District Municipality Populated places in the Overstrand Local Municipality