Ceres is the administrative centre and largest town of the

Witzenberg Local Municipality Witzenberg Municipality is a local municipality located within the Cape Winelands District Municipality, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. it had a population of 115,946. Geography The municipality covers an area of which incl ...

in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

Province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

. Ceres serves as a regional centre for the surrounding towns of Wolseley, Tulbagh, Op-die-Berg and

Prince Alfred Hamlet Prince Alfred Hamlet is a small town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It was founded by Johannes Cornelis Goosen, who was born in the Klein Drakenstein and came to the Warm Bokkeveld as a young farmer. In March 1851 Goosen bought t ...

. It is situated in the ''Warmbokkeveld'' (

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans g ...

: "warm antelope field") Valley about 170 km north-east of

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second larges ...

. Ceres is located at the north-eastern entrance to

Michell's Pass Michell's Pass is a mountain pass in the Western Cape province of South Africa which approaches the town of Ceres from the south-west, connecting it to Tulbagh, Worcester and the Breede River Valley. The pass is traversed by the R46 road and the C ...

and was the old route north between

and

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...

, which was later replaced by the N1 highway, which traverses the Breede River Valley to the south. Named after the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres, a name which is fitting as the valley in which the town is situated is extremely fertile and is a major producer of South Africa's

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, a ...

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in partic ...

Geography and climate

Ceres experiences a typical

Mediterranean climate A Mediterranean climate (also called a dry summer temperate climate ''Cs'') is a temperate climate sub-type, generally characterized by warm, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the ...

tempered by its altitude. The town experiences warmer temperatures in summer, due to its inland location with infrequent rainfall, however winters are cool to quite cold and wet, with frequent snowfalls on the surrounding higher-lying ground, rarely falling on the valley floor itself. Total annual precipitation averages 1088 mm, with average temperatures ranging from a February maximum of 29,9 °C to a July minimum of 2,4 °C. The ''Warmbokkeveld'' is climatically warmer than the surrounding highlands, which is known as the ''Kouebokkeveld'' ("cold antelope field"), with the latter often experiencing snowfalls in winter. Ceres is well known for

fruit juices Juice is a drink made from the extraction or pressing of the natural liquid contained in fruit and vegetables. It can also refer to liquids that are flavored with concentrate or other biological food sources, such as meat or seafood, such a ...

exported worldwide bearing the town's name. It is also famous locally for winter

snow Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet ...

and cherries:

residents flock to the town during winter to ski or simply play in the powder — something of a rarity for the otherwise mild climate they are used to — whilst in summer, people come to pick cherries at the "Klondyke" farm.

is one of the most stable parts of the world in seismic terms but on 29 September 1969 a massive shock shook the district without warning. The epicentre of the quake was on a major local structure called the Worcester fault, which had clearly been geologically active in the distant past but had not moved in over three hundred years of recorded history. Ceres was affected badly. Many old Cape Dutch buildings were damaged and some people died. The quake was strong enough to knock plaster off walls in

, a hundred miles (160 kilometres) away.

Famous people

* De Wet Barry - Rugby union player,

Springbok The springbok (''Antidorcas marsupialis'') is a medium-sized antelope found mainly in south and southwest Africa. The sole member of the genus ''Antidorcas'', this bovid was first described by the German zoologist Eberhard August Wilhelm ...

* Christiaan Barnard—first surgeon to perform a successful human-to-human

heart transplant A heart transplant, or a cardiac transplant, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease when other medical or surgical treatments have failed. , the most common procedu ...

operation spent the early years of his medical practice in Ceres. *

Ernst Joubert Ernst Joubert (born 5 August 1980 in Ceres, Western Cape) is a former South African rugby union player. He played at Number Eight for Saracens in the Aviva Premiership from 2009 to 2015 and was the vice captain of the team. He retired from all r ...

- Rugby player * Henry Francis Maltby - Writer and playwright * Raymond Herman Mordt - Rugby union player,

* Simon Rademan - Fashion designer and stylist * Breyton Paulse - Springbok rugby player * Ernst van Dyk - Wheelchair racer * John Villet - Springbok rugby player

Coats of arms

Municipal (1) — The Ceres municipal council assumed a pseudo-heraldic "coat of arms" in 1928. Western Cape Archives : Ceres Municipal Minutes (2 March 1928).The arms were depicted on
cigarette card
issued in 1931. The shield was quartered, and depicted (1) a sheaf of wheat on a red background, (2) a landscape scene showing a bridge across a river, (3) a tree on a sky blue background, and (4) a cornucopia on a green background. The motto was ''Loci dulcedo nos attinet''. Municipal (2) — The council assumed a proper coat of arms, designed by Ivan Mitford-Barberton and

H. Ellis Tomlinson Harold Ellis Tomlinson PhD (1916–1997) was an English educationist and heraldist. He designed many civic and corporate coats of arms, served as heraldic advisor to local government associations, and published monographs on the subject. Early life ...

, in 1948.Western Cape Archives : Ceres Municipal Minutes (28 June 1948). This was in response to a Cape Provincial Administration circular asking municipalities to have their arms checked and, if necessary, re-designed, to make them heraldically correct. The new arms were registered at the Bureau of Heraldry in March 1974. The arms were : ''Vert, a fess wavy Argent, thereon a barrulet wavy Azure, over all a pale Argent charged with a representation of the goddess Ceres, vested Vert, holding in her dexter hand a sheaf of wheat and in her sinister a torch enflamed all proper; in chief a mural crown Gules''. The motto was the same as before. In layman's terms, the new design was a green shield with a silver/blue/silver wavy stripe across the middle, and a vertical silver stripe depicting a red mural crown and the figure of the Roman goddess Ceres.

Gallery

Image:Matroosberg new.jpg, Matroosberg in the Hex River Mountains on the south-eastern flank of the Ceres valley

References

External links