Kwazulu-Natal, DUNDEE district, Talana Museum, Combination of British military, private and old farm graves

28 May 2021 6 albums Share: Facebook , Twitter , Google+

Begraafplaas inligting:- Die begraafplaas is sowat 2 Km buite Dundee op pad na Vryheid (R33). Information from Pam McFadden, Curator, Talana Museum (2021):- The old cemetery in Dundee was in a very bad state and with the purchase of land to start the Talana Museum in 1982, the municipality decided that all the old headstones that were still there, except for 2 Indian ones be relocated to Talana museum where they would be looked after. The Talana village cemetery was at the old Talana glass works. Originally there were 60 graves and the cemetery was looked after by the glass works as part of their staff village, However with the closure of the factory and the demolition of all the buildings the cemetery fell into a bad state. Many years of negotiation with the Anglican church of Natal eventually enabled us to save the 22 headstones that remained. We then moved them to the museum for safe keeping after photographing them in situ and recording the GPS co-ordinates. Over the years many farmers have asked us to move family headstones to the museum to the for safekeeping – either because of sale of farm, land claim or no one left to care for them. In the years that I have done this I have recorded the farm from which they were relocated but many were brought in before 1983 , which is when I started, as was appointed to develop the museum. The military graves were originally relocated about 200m higher up the slopes of Talana hill, but a decision by the South African War Graves Board in the 1960’s to consolidate war graves into near by cemeteries or move isolated graves closer to roads and access for maintenance, led to them being moved into the Smith family cemetery on the Smith farm, which became Talana Museum. eGGSA captions by: Celeste Rachmann, Lorraine Beechey, Annatjie Erasmus, James Anderson & Riana le Roux. The GGSA Cemetery DVD only has information on the location of the cemetery Cemetery ID: 3097 Google Earth Project Information:- GPSID: 3701 GPS: -28 9.341, 30 15.574