The Owl House

Helen Martins lived in this house in a small Karoo village and, from about 1945 until her death in 1976, transformed it - she crushed coloured glass and coated the interior walls and ceilings with it so the rooms catch light, and with the help of Koos Malgas, a local labourer who became her collaborator, she built hundreds of cement and glass sculptures in the yard: owls, camels, shepherds, mermaids, pilgrims, most of them facing east toward a Mecca she had read about and never saw. She worked in near isolation, was regarded as strange by the village, and took her own life at seventy-eight. The place is now a museum and a national monument, and it is one of the best-known outsider art environments anywhere. Athol Fugard's play The Road to Mecca is based on her, which brought the house a wider audience.

History

Helen Martins inherited the house from her parents and after their deaths began to transform it, first covering the inside with ground glass and then filling the Camel Yard with more than 300 cement sculptures, most facing east out of her fascination with Mecca and the Orient; her partner Johannes Hattingh made the first cement animals (Wikipedia, The Owl House (museum)).

What to look for

• The glass interiors - walls and ceilings coated in crushed coloured glass.
• The Camel Yard - hundreds of cement figures, most facing east.
• The collaboration - work made with Koos Malgas, the labourer who built with her.
• The isolation - thirty years of work by a woman the village considered odd.

When to go

March to May and September to November. Two hours. Morning light suits the glass rooms.

Before you go

The story is bleak and the museum does not soften it - Martins died by suicide and the house carries that. The village is reached by gravel and has few services. Summer heat is heavy. Photography rules apply inside.

Nearby

Nieu-Bethesda village is around it; Graaff-Reinet and Camdeboo are south.

Key facts