Du Toit's Pan, now usually Dutoitspan, is one of the earliest

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond is tasteless, odourless, strong, brittle solid, colourless in pure form, a poor conductor of e ...

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

camps at what is now

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

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 ...

. It was renamed

Beaconsfield Beaconsfield ( ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, northwest of central London and southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High Wycombe. The ...

, which existed as a separate borough from Kimberley itself until Kimberley and Beaconsfield were amalgamated as the City of Kimberley in 1912. An early map drawn by George Paton on the eve of the discovery of diamonds mentions 'Teuzpan' which, when pronounced in the German way, sounds the way local Dutch/

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 ...

-speaking farmers would have pronounced (Du) Toit's Pan.Hand-drawn map by George Paton, Africana Library, Kimberley The name refers also to one of the major mines in Kimberley, the Dutoitspan mine. It also applies to the main road extending southwards from the central business district of Kimberley, i.e. towards Beaconsfield.

References

Diamond mines in South Africa Kimberley, Northern Cape {{SouthAfrica-hist-stub