The Reverend Carl Arnoldus Bamberger, Fraserburg's first pastor, had a significant hand in the building's design. He insisted on metric rather than English-measured doors, and his love of the Baroque expressed itself in the curved walls of the rooms flanking the front entrance. The church council had rejected a plan for a gabled house -- the style common in nearby Prince Albert -- in favor of wolf ends, a roof form more reminiscent of a Dutch hallehuis, or free-standing barn, from the High Middle Ages. The result was a building that defied easy classification. Its facade was symmetrical, with a fanlight over the front door and four sash windows -- touches of Neo-Classical influence. Inside, six-panel doors were framed with wooden arches. But the thick solder beams, the open hearth in the kitchen, and the stable housed under the same roof as the living quarters were all throwbacks to much older European traditions. Henry Burnett completed the construction, and despite its competing influences, the house was unmistakably Cape Dutch: thatched roof, white walls, white frame, green shutters.

Over the decades, the Old Parsonage was changed almost beyond recognition. A veranda covered the front porch in 1877. In 1892, architect Carl Otto Hager replaced the thatched roof with corrugated iron and raised the walls by about a meter. Sash windows displaced the original swinging tails on the back and sides. A flat-roofed study was added in 1895. By the 1950s, large steel windows had been installed in the old shed to create a sunroom, and the building bore little resemblance to what Burnett had built a century earlier. More than once, the parsonage was slated for demolition. When a new parsonage was planned in 1959, many in the congregation wanted it built on the old site. After the new building went up elsewhere, the church council voted to tear the original down. Only the intervention of willing tenants saved it.

In 1974, a well-intentioned restoration plan proposed yellow wood floors, new windows of different dimensions, and a Cape Dutch arbor over the front porch -- changes that would have further obscured the building's character. The Museum Committee intervened in November 1974, secured permission from local organizations, and stopped the plan. For four years, the committee struggled to raise funds and gain provincial recognition. When recognition failed to materialize, they decided to start anyway. A Cape Town architect who had grown up in Fraserburg drew the plans for free. The work began in April 1979 with barely enough money for urgent repairs. Instead of cash donations, the committee asked for building materials. A Cape Coloured builder with deep knowledge of old construction methods restored the kitchen hearth -- a task that would have been impossible without his expertise. Local Rotary Club members removed later additions and replaced plaster. Farmers trucked in beams from Great Brak River and thatch from Stilbaai.

The most dramatic moment came when the municipal government invested R5,000, enough to replace the roof. Over four weeks, volunteers under the direction of Pastor Adelbert Scholtz dismantled the corrugated iron and restored the thatch, carefully measuring the dimensions of the original wolf ends. A Monsignor Afrika van Elim completed the deck work in two weeks. When it was done, the building looked again as it had in 1856. Community resistance to the project evaporated -- understandably, since most of Fraserburg had been involved in one way or another. Donations of museum pieces followed, and the National Monuments Council designated the Old Parsonage a heritage site without being asked. Later projects replaced 1892-era windows with older types, removed ceiling boards nailed up in 1911, and commissioned wallpaper matching 1857 patterns. A kliprondawel -- a corbelled stone hut unique to the Karoo -- was built in the yard, connecting the parsonage to the broader architectural heritage of the region. The Old Parsonage Museum now houses a comprehensive overview of pastoralist life in the Karoo, past and present.