2006 first edition very large format hardcover with dust jacket and 262 pages in very good condition.

A survey of the origin and development of towns, villages and hamlets at the Cape of Good Hope with particular reference to their physical planning and historical townscape.

Hans Fransen is a widely published author of books on vernacular architecture and early townscape photography.

Salient features of his current book:

• it is a large and lavishly illustrated and produced book sponsored by the Rupert Family Foundation
• it concentrates on about one hundred towns established before the end of the nineteenth century
• it is dedicated to the land surveyors of a bygone era
• it includes more than 700 illustrations, including early watercolours, pioneer photographs and aerial photographs, some of the last of which are from the 1930s "before the character of many of the towns changed irrevocably"
• Old Towns and Villages of the Cape is the first comprehensive study of the physical history of the older towns of the former Cape Colony. It contains over seven hundred illustrations, including hundreds of previously unpublished pioneer photographs and early watercolours. Many detailed aerial photographs, few of them ever seen in print, some dating back to the 1930s, allows the reader to step back in time and view the original towns before modern developments brought about irrevocable changes in the townscape. Covering almost one hundred towns, villages and hamlets, Old Towns and Villages of the Cape not only examines the role of surveyors, and other factors, in their initial layout and subsequent growth, but also describes the formation of new drostdy districts, new Dutch Reformed church congregations, boeredorpe, harbour settlements and mission towns. The well-known author, Hans Fransen, applies his extensive knowledge and insight to present the information, research and insights, most of it previously unpublished, in a very readable and accessible style.