Mary Myrtle (Western Cape) Traditional Cache
Mary Myrtle (Western Cape)
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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Close parking. Hardly a walk but do take your own pen.
Christopher Forrest Rigg , born in Scotland in 1861, emigrated to South Africa with his parents when he was two years old.
They settled in Barberton where he would later start work on the gold mine as a dynamite blaster.
His first marriage, which produced two sons, ended in divorce in 1893.
In 1894, he married 19 year old Lilian Isobel Moon from the Robertson district. He was 33.
They had three daughters, but only one survived infancy. The eldest, Mable, was born in Johannesburg in 1895, but died the same year at Linley in the Free State. The second daughter, Gladys, who was born at Linley, died 9 months later.
The family then moved to the present Bonnievale area in 1900, where little Mary Myrtle was born in 1903.
A pretty child and strongly religious, she grew up lovingly cared for by her parents. She especially loved playing in a certain lucerne field near their house. Tragically in 1911 she contracted meningitis and on her deathbed she asked her father to build her a small church.
Mary Myrtle was buried in her favourite playground, the lucerne field near her home.
Later the field became the family graveyard. The two graves on the right hand side of Mary Myrtle’s grave are those of her grand parents and on the left is the grave of her mother Lilian.
Rigg kept the promise to his daughter and built the small Norman style church in her memory. He quarried stone from the hill about 100 metres from the site. This must have been a time consuming process. The date on the cornerstone is 1921 but the first Anglican service was only held in 1924.
The floor of the church is marble – imported from Italy – and the stained glass windows came from England. The dome shaped roof is of stone from the river and cement. In the beginning it leaked badly and Rigg had it covered with a 2 inch layer of lead. Rigg bought the main door in Zanzibar. The door had been made for a jail and, at that stage, was believed to be 300 years old.
The two side doors and the furniture came from Thesen’s in Knysna.
At the entrance above the main door is a statuette in the likeness of Mary Myrtle, and in the background a rose tree with seven roses, depicting the seven years of her life.
The Mary Myrtle Rigg Church is the only church in the world known to have been built at the request of a child.
Christopher Forrest Rigg was the founder of the town Bonnievale, which was named in memory of his grandfather’s home in Scotland.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Nf lbh tb guebhtu tngr, urnq sbe yrsg pbeare. Ba gbc.
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