Barkly West

Establishment and naming

Heritage Sites

• The Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin was the first Anglican Church to be built on the Diamond Fields. Sir Henry Barkly laid the foundation stone in February 1871.
• Canteen Kopje is the site of early diamond diggings which also exposed a major archaeological occurrence of stratified Acheulean facies, subject to a current collaborative research venture by the University of Southampton, the University of the Witwatersrand and the McGregor Museum in Kimberley.
• Barkly West Museum situated in the Toll House at the Barkly Bridge.
• The iron Barkly Bridge, the first over the Vaal River, was transported in sections from the United Kingdom and erected across the Vaal in 1885. A steel plate gives details of its manufacture: "Westwood, Baillie & Co, Engineers and Contractors, London 1884." Shops in Kimberley and Barkly West closed for the occasion when the bridge was opened. A new bridge was built alongside in the 1970s. The toll house erected to recover revenues from those using the old bridge now serves as a museum, opened in 2000.
• The Nooitgedacht Glacial Pavements, upstream along the Vaal River between Barkly West and Kimberley, with evidence of the Dwyka glaciation some 300 million years ago. Much later - within the last 1500 years or so - the scoured rocks were used by Later Stone Age people as panels for rock engravings.

  Notable residents

• Renowned writer Sarah Gertrude Millin grew up at Longlands outside Barkly West and her father opened the first shop in town.
• Cecil Rhodes held the seat of Barkly West in the House of Assembly of Cape Colony until his death in 1902.
• Z.K. Matthews, prominent black academic who became a president of the African National Congress and assisted in the drafting of the Freedom Charter, was born at Winters Rush outside Barkly West. The new hospital is named after Professor Z.K. Matthews.
• Mphashane Reginald Leeuw, from Barkly West, was instituted and installed as the Dean of Kimberley, 2015.