Mr. FA Behnke, adventurer and entrepreneur from Germany, started a brewery in Lydenburg in 1898. In the same year his father sent him a house in crates from Sweden. It was a wedding gift.
He had an orchard of orange trees on his property, and so called the house "Limonanis" - the German word for Sweet Oranges.
Shrapnel and a piece of the Long Tom bomb during the Anglo-Boer War damaged the house. The British soldiers used the blue gums and fruit trees in the garden for firewood. Behnke's brewery was occupied by the Royal Irish Regiment and orchestra during the war.
The brewery finally closed its doors in 1911, because the lighter taste of German beer didn't really appeal to the locals.
