The house was built in August 1707 by Sebastian Schreuder, who was a German messenger of the court of the Dutch East India Company.

During a hard downpour, the housewife simply closed the outside shutters; in fine weather, the catches were released, the whole frame was lifted out, and fresh air was let in.

[2] The house was declared a monument in 1974 and is currently listed as a Grade II Western Cape provincial heritage site.

The site on which it stands was granted to Christiaan Ludolph Neethling in 1781, and a year later he had built a double-storey house on the property.

The facade of the house was designed in the classical style with fluted pilasters running up to support a wide cornice.

The classicism is repeated in the treatment of the pedimented front door, which surrounds a plasterwork palm tree, the symbol on the Stellenbosch Church seal.

The house is furnished to reflect the interior of a typical middle-class Stellenbosch home during the period 1840 – 1880, more-or-less the time it was occupied by Bergh and his family.

Heavy mahogany furniture in the prevailing English taste was very fashionable at the time and the Victorian penchant for clutter often made it difficult to move about in the drawing room.

In the turbulent last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Governor and the Political Council at Cape Town came to the conclusion that it was desirable to store ammunition at Stellenbosch.

Stellenbosch was also allowed cannon and guns, and the gunpowder and ammunition necessary to ward off an enemy attack, and a suitable building for storing this material had to be constructed.

In 1971, the municipality agreed to allow the Stellenbosch Museum to take over the building for display of its collection of fire-arms, cannon, military uniforms, and other objects.

Kruithuis is unique in South Africa as it is the only remaining powder magazine in the country dating from the days of the Dutch East India Company, and it is a symbol of the town's rich and varied architectural heritage.