MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Piet Retief Monument

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Hi There,

My wife and I have just returned from having a lovely few days away in PE.

Being a Stonemason and Letter cutter we thought we would go around looking at the historical side of PE as it is one of the oldest towns in SA. We loved the Donkin Heritage trail with all the old historic building and the beautiful Monuments alone the way this was well worth the trip for me, in seeing the old ways of Stonemasonry.

We stayed in Summerstrand this time and along our way we found the Piet Retief Monument, thinking this would be nice and take a few pictures, to find sometime in this monuments life it has had Granite slabs set into the monument, which have been Sandblasted, this is a crying shame. Not only do they not fit in with the keeping of the monument as the monument is built of sandstone, the letters is very hard to read with all the weathering, in a couple of years this will be unreadable and lost.

Why this was not done in Sandstone and the letters should have been hand cut as a hand cut letter is the most elegant letter form on stone and will last for year, because Sandblasting letters only scratches the surface of the stone, and a cut letter is cut deep into the stone (Which is called: Lasting Letters) hopefully one day people will go back to the old ways and have these monuments for hundreds of years like many other ones around SA and not just a few years.

We love PE and enjoyed our stay and look forward to going back soon.

Yours Sincerely
S.Huber
Stone2stone

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.