Carnarvon nagmaalhuisie! From ugly duckling to eye-catching beauty

Photographs Greg Cox

The plot for Svenskbo, the first of five nagmaalhuisies that Pieter Hoffman bought in Carnarvon’s historic Church Street in 2021, was set aside for the Rhenish Missionary Society in 1860. The original two-room, thatched-roof cottage, just less than 40m2 in size, was built in about 1863. Pieter cordoned off the erf with a low wall. “It gives the cottage its own personal space,” he says. He found the gate in the backyard and repaired it. To the left of Svenskbo is one of the other cottages that Pieter is now renovating.