Paternoster whitewashed fisherman cottage

Paternoster is one of the last of the working South African West Coast fishing villages, ninety minutes north of Cape Town on the Atlantic shore of the Western Cape. Its trademark is a cluster of whitewashed, blue-shuttered fisherman cottages standing shoulder to shoulder along a long curve of white sand where the local snoek and crayfish fleets still launch their brightly-painted wooden boats from the beach every morning. This two-bedroom, 68 square-metre cottage is a classic example of the vernacular — thick lime-washed walls, small deep-set windows, a thatched roof, and a paved courtyard with a fireplace and lemon tree.

Inside, the cottage is authentically finished: yellowwood ceiling beams, riempies-and-tile floors, a working Dover stove, a small but well laid-out kitchen with blue and white Delft tiles, and two bedrooms sharing a compact bathroom. Roofs of this age need periodic thatching, but the structure itself is solid. Municipal water, electricity and refuse are all connected. The lot is compact — Paternoster is dense by design — but the beach starts two hundred metres away and functions as everyone's back garden.

South Africa welcomes foreign freehold buyers and Paternoster is one of the most established heritage-cottage markets in the country. Prices in Paternoster proper — inside the whitewashed original village — have risen faster than the surrounding areas as the town has become a favourite of Cape Town weekenders and international food travellers, drawn by acclaimed restaurants like Wolfgat, Gaaitjie and Oep ve Koep. Even so, honest small cottages in the village still trade well under the equivalent of a modest Cape Town suburban flat.

The beach is a cold, clear Atlantic crescent — colder than the East Coast but astonishingly beautiful, with vivid turquoise stripes over pale sand and long dune walks in both directions. Cape Columbine Nature Reserve and its lighthouse are twenty minutes further west; the West Coast National Park, famous for its spring wildflowers and Langebaan lagoon, is about half an hour south. The town has a Spar, a butcher, a bakery, a wine shop, several galleries and a Saturday market. If you want an authentic piece of the Cape's fishing-village heritage within an easy drive of Cape Town International, this is exactly the kind of house that made Paternoster famous.