Edward Rowarth, Old Church Paarl
oil on canvas, 19½ in. x 60½ in.;
Private hands
(formerly in the KWV Collection)
The church in die Paarl is the third-oldest NGK congregation in South Africa, after the Groote Kerk in Cape Town and the Moederkerk in Stellenbosch. It is often known as the Strooidakkerk (straw-roof church) for obvious reasons.
This part of the Drakenstein was first settled by Huguenots, where the dominee Pierre Simond preached in French from the foundation of the church in 1691 until he returned to Europe in 1702.
More than two-and-a-half centuries later, its preacher was
ds. Jacobus Johannes ‘Siebie’ Sieberhagen, who became one of the most formidable leaders of the domestic mission in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (NGSK) for members of the Coloured (mixed-race) community in South Africa.
(In their typically racially minded way, there was also the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa [NGKA] as the corresponding church for black Africans.)