Bain's Passes

Michell's Pass

Both BainsDocumented

Designed and built by Andrew under Surveyor-General Charles Michell's direction. Thomas worked as his assistant. Convict labour.

R46Route
About 10 kmLength
490 mSummit
Tarred 1999Surface

See it on the mapLog your drive

Before you go

Tarred pass on R46; occasional rockfalls after heavy winter rain.

Road conditions change with weather, floods, fires and roadworks. Check the latest conditions with the road authority or local tourism office before you leave, and carry offline maps.

About this pass

Michell's Pass climbs the gorge from Wolseley up to Ceres, along the Breede River, and is named after Colonel Charles Michell, the colony's Surveyor-General. It replaced the older Mostertshoek Pass of 1765, where wagons were reportedly dismantled and carried over the steep section under a waterfall. Andrew's road opened the Bokkeveld to farming, and Ceres' transport trade grew up around it. Until the railway to Kimberley opened in 1885 it was the main route north to the Diamond Fields. The stretch now runs through the Ceres Nature Reserve, with rocky slopes, and in winter snow often falls on the plateau above.

The old tollhouse stands beside the pass, a declared heritage site (a Grade II National Monument per SAHRIS). It was built shortly after the pass opened in 1848 and began collecting tolls on 1 January 1849. The scale of charges was per wheel, with 3d for a four-wheeled vehicle without brakes (remschoens) and 2d for others, then 1d for a pack animal, 2d for other animals and half a penny for a sheep, goat or pig. It served until a concrete road opened on 31 March 1946. Local legend says the ghost of a toll keeper's wife walks the road at night. Birders visit the slope behind the tollhouse for species such as the Protea canary, bar-throated apalis and swee waxbill. Bain also built the Greybrug, a 12 m stone bridge over the Breede River, which later washed away and was replaced by the Witbrug. The 1988 to 1992 rebuild blasted hard rock with about 83,000 kg of explosives, closing the pass for three hours each working day. The new bridge stands on ten caissons, some hand-dug 13 m below the riverbed. Wagon ruts of the old Mostertshoek route can still be seen. The Michell's Pass convict station (Worcester) has postal records for 1854 to 1855, and a Mostert's Hoek station (Stellenbosch) for 1846 to 1847. Colour Dots (Old Tollhouse): the building was erected shortly after the pass was completed in 1848, and from 1 January 1849 tolls were collected: three pence per wheel of a four-wheeled vehicle, one penny per pack animal, a halfpenny per sheep, goat or pig. Before it, Jan Mostert had built the rough, narrow Mostertshoek route in 1765. The pass featured the Grey Bridge, a 12 m stone span across the Breede River, later replaced by the Witbrug after floods; when diamonds were found in the north, wagons rattled through day and night. It stayed a key route until the Michell's railway tunnel opened in 1876, on the Worcester–Ceres line.

History

Built by
Designed and built by Andrew under Surveyor-General Charles Michell's direction. Thomas worked as his assistant. Convict labour.
Built
1846–1848; opened 1848. Cost £22,838.
Location
R46, near Ceres, Western Cape
Later work
Resurfaced.Tarred 1999Upgraded.The Ceres railway through the same gorge was built 1910–1912; it is a separate railway work, not a road rebuild.Rebuilt.Rebuilt 1988 to about 1992 for R42 million: widened from 6 m to 9.8 m, hairpins removed, three passing lanes added. The old tollhouse and parts of Bain's stone walls were kept.
Notes
One account gives construction as 1846–48 and Andrew's appointment as 1845. Cost is given as £22,838 in one source and £21,000 by the Ceres Museum (which gives the dates as both 1846 to 1848 and 1848). The Colour Dots tollhouse listing would not load its text, so nothing is taken from it. Artefacts.co.za dates the tollhouse 1848 and carries the ghost story, but marks its own page as AI-generated, so the ghost story is shown as local legend. sa-venues says the tollhouse has been a national monument since 1972; SAHRIS confirms the status but not the year, so no year is given. The Forgotten Highway Guidebook also gives 1846 for construction and 1848 for the opening, and calls the older route Mostert's Hoek. The SAHO station dates are postal records, which show when a post office existed and not the full length of the work. Colour Dots states that Andrew Geddes Bain did not build Michell's Pass (it says Charles Michell's design, built 1846–48 by convicts) and that he made later improvements and built Bain's Kloof. Ross's talk and HIPSA both say Bain was responsible for Michell's Pass 1846–54, so this is a genuine disagreement between sources.

Find it

Pin
-33.37880, 19.29650
The old tollhouse is at about 33.3908°S, 19.2860°E (SAHRIS).
Open in
OpenStreetMap · Google Maps · OpenTopoMap

Sources

More Bain passes, roads and bridges

Passes

Roads

Bridges