English: 1899 heralded the second Boer War and saw the construction of the English Fort above Cogmans Kloof. This was built by stonemason William Robertson at a site selected by Lieutenant Colonel Sidney, Commandant of the Royal Field Artillery. The fort was garrisoned by a company of the Gordon Highlanders who were camped on the original road construction site below Kalkoenkrans (Turkey Crag).

Montagu had 4 small rectangular forts and a smaller circular one, all of which were instrumental in causing Commandant Gideon Scheepers and his Boer Commando of 300 men to avoid Montagu. Strictly speaking, the well-known landmark at Cogman's Kloof is not a blockhouse but a construction of mortared stonework which shares some features with the blockhouses.

Perched high on a rock above the R62 road, three kilometres south of Montagu, it measures 9,3 x 3,8 m on the outside. It has a simple entrance opening at the west end and 21 'waisted' loopholes formed in the masonry without steel plates. The loopholes are 700-800 mm above the concrete floor and the 400 mm thick stone walls reach a height of about two metres inside the building.

Inside the fort, near the south-east corner, is a roughly circular mortared stone platform (400 mm high), together with a drainage channel and hole at the base of the adjacent east wall, which seems to indicate the presence of a water tank and hence a roof. It is not known how much of this building has been restored but one would expect the entrance to have been protected by a screen wall either inside or outside.

Military History Journal Vol 10 No 6 - December 1997

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