Cookhouse is a small village located on the west bank of the Great Fish River in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
Cookhouse lies at the intersection of the N10 National Route and the R63 Provincial Route, approximately 24 km east of Somerset East and 170 km north of Gqeberha (formerly known as Port Elizabeth).
Cookhouse falls within the Blue Crane Route Local Municipality and the Sarah Baartman District Municipality.
The town is home to the Cookhouse Wind Farm, which comprises 66 turbines. The farm became operational in November 2014 and supplies clean energy to the Eskom grid.
History
The Great Fish River formed the eastern boundary of the Cape Colony until 1819. The current village is said to take its name from a small stone house used for shelter and cooking by troops camping on the bank of this river. Another explanation links the name to the hot climate as experienced by the troops stationed there.
The Cookhouse is located on what was the Roodewal farm owned by Frans Johannes van Aardt in the 1770s. He was born on 12 September 1777 in Somerset East and died in 1856. Frans Johannes van Aardt was married twice; first to Susanna Wilhelmina Tregardt on 21 October 1798. She died in 1825, aged 27. Another theory is that the town got its name in the late 1790s because Susanna van Aardt supplied provisions from her “cookhouse” (or outdoor kitchen) to riders and soldiers waiting to cross the Great Fish River. After her death, Frans Johannes married Maria Johanna Mentz in 1826.
In the 1870s, the government of Prime Minister John Molteno oversaw a massive expansion of the Cape Colony’s railway system, and a route northwards to De Aar from Port Elizabeth (officially renamed Gqeberha) and Port Alfred was chosen by the Cape Government Railways to pass through what is now Cookhouse. A station was built here, which became an important railway junction, and a small settlement formed around this connection.
This railway station in Cookhouse is an attraction that was written about in Cookhouse Station, a poem by Chris Mann that describes how he imagines the railway station was at its peak.
