Sir Harry Smith, the governor of the British Cape Colony at the time, decided to annex the area and set out clear boundaries.

The Basotho lost a vast amount of land due to this annexation and the Boers were enraged by this process.

Major Henry Douglas Warden was subsequently forced out of Bloemfontein in June 1848 by a Boer group led by Andries Pretorius.

The Boers were asked to send a delegation to a meeting with the British special commissioner Sir George Clerk in August 1853.

The first two presidents of the Orange Free State Republic were later sworn into office in this building which later became a prominent symbol in Apartheid era education in South Africa.