Grahamstown is first and foremost a student town. At the top end of the high street is one of the country’s major centres of learning, Rhodes University, which has 70 major buildings on a 195-ha campus with approximately 3200 students and 1800 staff. The presence of the university has a significant impact on this small town and during term time the pubs and bars are packed with students. It is a pleasant enough place to wander around and there are a number of interesting little shops along the high street.
Despite the English feel to the town centre the other side of the valley is dominated by a poor, dusty and badly serviced township where the majority of the African residents live. The proximity of the two sides of town makes the contrast more apparent than in some of the bigger towns and cities, where the townships are some distance from the centre.
Grahamstown was established around a fort which had been built here after the Fourth Frontier War. It was founded in 1812 and named after Colonel Graham. Within two years it was a busy border settlement. The 1820 settlers began to arrive after the end of the Fifth Frontier War, during which Grahamstown had been besieged by Xhosa warriors. Despite the continual threat of armed conflict and problems of security, the town had evolved into the second largest settlement in the whole of southern Africa by 1836.
One factor behind the town’s rapid growth was that the majority of the 1820 settlers were ill-prepared to be farmers, let alone in an environment of which they had no knowledge. As soon as they realized farming was not going to bring them wealth and security they gave it up and returned to the town to take up the jobs they were trained to do. Grahamstown quickly established a thriving industry based around blacksmiths, carpenters, millers and gunsmiths. Having settled back in the town, the skilled settlers quickly built a series of elegant stone buildings which remain grand specimens of the era’s architecture today. Of particular note are the buildings around Church Square, but elsewhere there are churches and fine private homes. The culmination of all this is a smart town centre with a distinctly English atmosphere.
The town is served by some mainline buses on the route between Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) and Durban. The Baz Bus does not stop here, though, as it deviates off the N2 after Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) and goes via Port Alfred on the coast.
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