[2] The management committee of the Association consulted with Dr Mary Cook, at that time the curator of the Drostdy Museum in Swellendam.

She advised that they concentrate their collecting efforts on the Victorian era, as no other museum in the area was focused on that period, and it coincided with a time of growth and development in the Caledon region.

(Letter from the Caledon Museum Association to the Director, Department of Nature Conservation, Cape Town; 29 October 1971; Translated from the Afrikaans).

Information in the interior was resourced from the books of the writer Dr Con de Villiers and the descriptions of his family home on the farm Dunghye Park in the Caledon district.

The museum ran a very successful shop, and used part of the building to display the Caledon Family Photographs which it was in the process of collecting.

The Lodge, which had been vacant for a time, was renovated to serve as store rooms and offices for the museum.

The museum has no ties whatsoever to the Freemasons, but the decorative ceiling, original to the Lodge can still be viewed.

The renowned South African artist Peter Clarke lived in Tesselaarsdal, near Caledon, for a period when he was a young man.

The works are recognisably Peter Clarke’s, while also displaying the youthful naiveté of a young artist.