Newlands Cricket Ground

This guide to Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town traces how South Africa's most famous cricket ground grew out of a brewer's own farm. It follows Jacob Letterstedt, who bought the land in 1845, and his daughter Lydia, who agreed years later to rent a corner of the estate to a Western Province cricket committee. The neighboring Mariendal brewery, dating to the 1650s, still stands behind the grandstand, drawing on the same Liesbeek River water that first brought brewers to this spot.