The Barkly West Museum was established in 2000 in the old Toll House beside the Barkly Bridge which crosses the Vaal River at Barkly West in the

Northern Cape The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi T ...

, South Africa.

Establishment

The museum was based on the collection mainly of minerals and archaeological finds gathered in the earlier twentieth century by Mining Commissioner Gideon Retief, which was once housed under imperfect conditions as the "Mining Commissioner's Museum" in the town. Following years of neglect, the toll house was restored and converted into a museum opened in Heritage Month, 2000.

Displays

The displays comprise exhibition cabinets on local geology, archaeology and history and panels created by Kimberley's

McGregor Museum The McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, originally known as the Alexander McGregor Memorial Museum, is a multidisciplinary museum which serves Kimberley and the Northern Cape, established in 1907. Overview Housed at first in a purpos ...

, on precolonial history, the alluvial diamond diggings and the origins and

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

of the town. The displays touch on mid-twentieth-century forced removals in Barkly West that were a consequence of the Group Areas Act under Apartheid. A section of the display is about the

Canteen Kopje skull {{Primary sources, date=February 2007 Canteen is an Australian national support organisation for young people (aged 12–25) living with cancer; including cancer patients, their brothers and sisters, and young people with parents or primary carers ...

, a cast of which is exhibited. A stone tablet bearing the names of noteworthy visitors to the nearby

Canteen Kopje Canteen Kopje is an archaeological site, formally protected as a grade 2 provincial heritage site, and approved in 2017 for re-grading to national status, situated outside Barkly West in the Northern Cape, South Africa. The place was previously ...

site and the Mining Commissioner's Museum in the 1940s includes the signature of the Abbé Henri Breuil. Photographs showing the Barkly Bridge and Vaal River in flood overlook the river and bridge. The museum has undergone a revamp in 2009–2010. The 125th anniversary of the opening of the "Vaal River Bridge, West Barkly" - as it was originally named - was celebrated here on June 26, 2010, with readings from the Diamond Fields Advertiser, William Guybon Atherstone, Emil Holub, Sol Plaatje and Dan Jacobson.Bruwer, R. 2010. Bridge's 125th anniversary celebrated. ''Noordkaap'' 30 June 2010 p 6

External links

Roger Webster interviews Ashley Bristow on the Barkly West Museum

References

{{authority control Museums established in 2000 Museums in the Northern Cape Archaeological museums in South Africa 2000 establishments in South Africa 21st-century architecture in South Africa