23/08/2026
History of the Lady Grey area – Part 1
Millions of years ago, the ancient inland Ecca Sea of the Gondwana supercontinent covered much of what is now South Africa. Dinosaurs once roamed this region, leaving their bones preserved in layers of rock.
Over millions of years, the Gondwana supercontinent broke apart, and natural forces such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, meteorite impacts, and other disasters shaped the mountains, rivers, gorges, and plains.
Lady Grey, and a large area surrounding it, ended up in an area which is known as the Stormberg Basin. To understand what is meant by “Basin”, one needs to understand the topography of the area. The basin is surrounded by high mountains, valleys and rivers. See the attached photo.
This area, and in particular, the Lady Grey area was extremely difficult to access. Apart from the high mountains that form the Stormberg Basin, one had to cross the Orange River or the Kraai River to get to Lady Grey.
The area was described as a no-man’s-land that was long avoided by migrating black tribes as well as white farmers.
In the year 1700, the rugged mountain valleys and foothills of the Witteberg range were inhabited exclusively by nomadic indigenous hunter-gatherers and pastoralists.
• San (Bushmen): The original hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the region, who lived in small nomadic family groups, hunted game, and left a rich legacy of rock art and archaeological sites in the sandstone shelters in deep river ravines and hollow krantzes of the area.
• Khoekhoe (Khoikhoi): Indigenous pastoralist groups who moved through parts of the wider region with their livestock, interacting and sharing parts of the landscape with San hunter-gatherers.
Note that these tribes were nomadic and although they hunted, grazed their cattle and moved through the Lady Grey from time to time, they did not live in Lady Grey.
The cold winters and poor winter grazing discouraged livestock farmers from settling in the area. The summer grazing was good, but it was devoured by large swarms of locusts and thousands of springboks that visited the area from time to time.
The first people to find a comfortable home in the Stormberg were those who wished to remain beyond the reach of the long arm of the law: highwaymen, murderers, jailbirds, deserters, discharged soldiers, stock thieves, and marauding gangs.
The first Trekboers migrated to this area for economic reasons. They entered the Stormberg area in 1823 and reported that they did not find a single black tribe in the area. Their lifestyle was also nomadic.
The Cape Government came up with a “Loan Farms” system and these Trekboers had to pay annual rental fees for temporary grazing rights over extensive tracts of land.
To obtain tighter control and revenue, the temporary inspection tracts were converted into longer-term Quitrent tenures, requiring fixed annual payments and formal boundary surveying.
The area was desolate with only 25 permanent families living in the Stormberg area in 1832.
Chase, the first Magistrate of the Albert district, which was part of the Stormberg Basin, described the area as his banishment to the “nether end of existence” in 1848.
Sir George Cathcart described the same area as curious but miserable desert in 1853.
In the Magistrate records of Aliwal North, WO Berg, wrote that it seemed to be on the border of everywhere and everything.
The area was sparsely populated.
Look out for Part 2…
Note: I will be posting information about Lady Eliza Lucy Grey as well as other documents and information that may be beneficial in the effort to keep the town name Lady Grey.
Please do not nominate other names just because you think it will at least sound better than the names pushed by people who benefit financially from a name change.
Photo borrowed from the research done by A.V. Oosthuizen for his book “Rebelle van die Stormberge”.
