Crookes Brothers is a South African agricultural company founded on the KwaZulu-Natal Mid South Coast. Samuel Crookes arrived at Port Natal in 1860 and established a sugar mill; his sons incorporated Crookes Brothers Limited in 1913, and the company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1948. Restilridge Farm Estate is built on those original Renishaw farm lands.
Most estates are built on cleared ground. Restilridge Farm Estate is built on a landscape that has been farmed continuously for more than a century and a half, and the shape of that farming is still legible in the contours, the tree lines, the farm roads and the buildings that remain standing.
This is the story of the ground itself. It is not a property article. It is an account of who worked this land, what they built on it, and what of that survives inside the estate today.
Who were the Crookes Brothers?
The story starts one generation earlier. Joseph Landers and his Yorkshire family arrived in Natal as settlers of the Byrne scheme, travelling out on the ship Henrietta, and established a sugar plantation which they named after Renishaw Hall in England. That name has stayed on the land ever since.
Samuel Crookes, a wagon-builder from the village of Finningley in Yorkshire, arrived at Port Natal in 1860 and married Sarah Ann Landers the same year. He expanded the family holdings by acquiring the Maryland and Restalridge properties, built a sugar mill, and formed the partnership Samuel Crookes and Sons. He was an inventive farmer as well as an acquisitive one, best remembered on the estate for a device he called his hill plough.
In 1913, Samuel’s sons George, Fred and John incorporated Crookes Brothers Limited. The company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1948. It expanded well beyond the Mid South Coast: its own corporate history records acquisitions in 1957 spanning sugar cane operations in Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal, farms in Mpumalanga, and its first deciduous fruit farm in the Vyeboom area of the Western Cape, and in 2012 macadamia land in Mozambique alongside its first property development approvals.
That 2012 date matters here, because it is the point at which a farming company began deliberately planning what would happen to its home farm.
How did sugarcane shape the landscape at Restilridge?
Sugarcane is a crop that writes itself into topography. Cane is planted along the contour, so the terracing you can still read across the Renishaw lands is not decorative, it is agricultural engineering that took decades to establish. The mills, the tramlines laid to move cane to them, and the farm roads cut between blocks all follow the logic of moving a heavy, perishable crop downhill efficiently.
What that leaves behind is a landscape with structure. There are mature windbreak tree lines where cane blocks met. There are established road cuttings. There are high points that were chosen deliberately, because a farmer wanted to see his fields from his verandah. None of this can be manufactured by a developer, and it is the practical meaning of the estate’s Land and Landscape pillar.
The family lived on that landscape as well as farming it. The estate’s own history records hunts across the fields, picnics by the Mpambanyoni River, and starlit gatherings, with Samuel’s grandchildren attending local schools before returning as stewards of the estate in agriculture and engineering roles.
What survives on the land today?
Several original buildings still stand and are being brought back into use rather than cleared.
Cypress Hill
Cypress Hill is a single-storey colonial farmhouse built in the late 1880s by Samuel Crookes on the highest point of the historic Maryland farm. From its wide verandahs he oversaw the family’s expanding sugar operations, including the Renishaw mill, while experimenting with his hill plough and hosting gatherings. The house was home to Samuel and his children George, Fred, John, Clara, Lena and Emily. His unmarried daughters Lena and Emily later used it as a retreat into the mid-twentieth century, and in the 1950s and 1960s it served as housing for Renishaw’s overseers. In 1985 Samuel’s descendants gathered there to mark 125 years.
The Renishaw chapel
The chapel was built in the 1920s or 1930s by the Crookes and Landers families, descendants of the 1850 Byrne settlers, as a spiritual centre within the sugar farming operation. It is a simple colonial Natal building with sturdy walls and a modest steeple, and it held stained-glass windows and worn pews. It hosted weddings, baptisms and memorials across generations. Lena Crookes cut the ribbon at its opening. The chapel is now positioned for revitalisation within the Restilridge estate.
How was the estate laid out against the old farm structure?
Restilridge Farm Estate sits inside the Renishaw Coastal Precinct, developed by Renishaw Property Developments, a subsidiary of Crookes Brothers Limited. Renishaw Hills, a neighbouring development in the same precinct, reports that the wider Mpambanyoni conservation development spans roughly 350 hectares running from Scottburgh to Widenham, that around 80 percent of that land is set aside for preservation and protection of natural ecosystems, and that sugar cane farming will be phased out over time and the land restored to indigenous landscape. The same account notes the project is planned to unfold over the next 20 to 30 years, with consent obtained from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Environmental Affairs, the National Department of Agriculture and Umdoni Municipality.
The practical consequence for a resident is that the greenbelts and conservation corridors inside the estate are not leftover space. They follow the drainage lines, river edges and steep ground that were never good cane land in the first place, which is why they are also the parts of the farm that kept their indigenous vegetation.
What does it mean to buy into land with a working past?
The trees are already there. A cleared site plants saplings and waits twenty years. This land has mature canopy along its old field boundaries and indigenous forest in its valleys.
The buildings carry a documented history. The Pioneer Collection at Restilridge consists of restored original Crookes Brothers farmhouses, reimagined for modern living rather than replicated in a heritage style. The Heritage Homes within that collection are the Crookes Brothers houses themselves.
And the landscape is still changing. Cane is being phased out in stages, not overnight, which means residents are moving into a working landscape mid-transition rather than a finished picture. Whether that appeals is a matter of taste, but it should be understood before buying rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
What was Restilridge before it was an estate?
It was farmland belonging to the Crookes family and later Crookes Brothers Limited, principally under sugarcane. The land includes the historic Maryland and Restalridge properties acquired by Samuel Crookes after 1860, and forms part of the original Renishaw estate established by the Landers family, Byrne scheme settlers from Yorkshire.
What is the history of Crookes Brothers in KwaZulu-Natal?
Samuel Crookes arrived at Port Natal in 1860 and built a sugar mill on the Renishaw lands. His sons George, Fred and John incorporated Crookes Brothers Limited in 1913. The company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1948 and expanded into Mpumalanga, Eswatini, the Western Cape and Mozambique.
Is Crookes Brothers still farming the land at Restilridge?
Sugarcane farming continues on parts of the Renishaw lands and is being phased out in stages, with the land progressively restored to indigenous landscape. Renishaw Property Developments, the developer of the precinct, is a subsidiary of Crookes Brothers Limited.
How old are the heritage homes at Restilridge Farm Estate?
Cypress Hill, the best documented of the residences, was built in the late 1880s by Samuel Crookes on the highest point of the historic Maryland farm. The Renishaw chapel dates from the 1920s or 1930s. Dates for other Pioneer Collection residences should be confirmed with the estate.
Is the Renishaw chapel still in use?
The chapel hosted weddings, baptisms and memorials for generations of the Crookes and Landers families. It is currently positioned for revitalisation within the Restilridge estate rather than in regular use.
Where is Restilridge Farm Estate?
Restilridge Farm Estate is on the KwaZulu-Natal Mid South Coast near Scottburgh, which lies approximately 53 km south-west of Durban on the N2. It forms part of the Renishaw Coastal Precinct.
