The Old Rectory

The Story

The building that became The Old Rectory has stood since 1777, when the Dutch East India Company raised it as a military barracks on the bay that would not receive its name until Governor Van Plettenberg arrived the following year. It served as an Anglican rectory for five successive clergymen from 1869, survived various reinventions, and eventually fell into ruin. By the time Rare Earth Retreats acquired it, only a handful of walls remained.

The late John “Chick” Legh, founder of Rare Earth, began a two-year restoration in 2015: thatch reinstated over corrugated iron, yellowwood trusses resurrected, original stonework preserved behind glass. The hotel opened in August 2017 as an eighteen-suite boutique property with Provincial Heritage Site status and a TGCSA five-star grading, since recognised by Conde Nast Traveller among its top properties in Southern and Eastern Africa. Since Legh’s passing in 2021, CEO Lauren Davies has continued the family stewardship of what is now the oldest surviving building in Plettenberg Bay, and one of its most considered places to stay.

The heritage is the reason to visit. The proximity to Blue Flag beaches is the reason to linger.

Location

Plettenberg Bay occupies the crown of the Garden Route, a wide, south-facing bay where the Tsitsikamma mountains meet the Indian Ocean and southern right whales calve from June to November. It is one of seven accredited Whale Heritage Sites worldwide, six of its beaches carry Blue Flag certification, and the combination of warm-water currents, sheltered coves, and marine biodiversity gives it a strong claim as one of South Africa’s finest coastal towns for families and couples who want sand, sea, and enough to fill a week.

The Old Rectory sits at the quiet end of this, in a cul-de-sac where the town drops to sea level and the noise falls away. Wedge Beach is a two-minute walk. Lookout Beach, the broader and busier strand, is under twenty minutes on foot. The position is sheltered rather than elevated: ancient milkwood trees close over the property, walled gardens absorb street noise, and the building itself, a 1777 VOC military barracks, built a year before the governor arrived and gave the town his name, sits low enough that no room has a sea view. The ocean here is a short walk, not a window feature, which suits those who want garden stillness between beach visits rather than a balcony overlooking the bay. The town centre sits uphill, a steep walk that favours beach access over dining-out convenience.

The trade-off against The Plettenberg Hotel, perched on the headland with panoramic ocean views and a heated pool, is straightforward: The Old Rectory offers heritage intimacy where its competitor offers the view. September and October offer the best of both — peak whale season overlapping with warming spring weather and shoulder-season quiet.

For those who value heritage over a horizon, the exchange is not a difficult one.

Rooms

The heritage is structural, not decorative. Original stone walls, yellowwood ceilings that predate the Republic, and the proportions of a building designed for garrison use translate surprisingly well to hotel rooms. Everything the architect added, underfloor heating, rainfall showers, contemporary South African art sits inside those proportions without competing with them.

Two categories divide the eighteen suites. Pool-Facing Suites open directly onto the courtyard pool and milkwood deck, the more social position, where morning coffee comes with the sound of other guests. Garden Suites sit behind the main building in walled enclosures screened by indigenous planting, quieter and more private, better suited to couples who value separation over company.

Both share the same specification: king beds (twin configuration available), Nespresso machines, and open-plan bathrooms where the toilet is enclosed but the shower and basin area is open to the bedroom. This works for couples and less so for friends or family members sharing a suite. Fourteen of the eighteen suites interconnect through shared foyers, an unusual proportion that makes this one of the more flexible boutique options on the Garden Route for families travelling with older children.

Communal Areas

A property of this scale does not generate the critical mass for activity zones, which is precisely how it positions itself. The ground floor of the original barracks functions as the social heart: exposed stone, yellowwood beams, and generous ceiling heights that give the public spaces a weight and proportion the suites echo on a smaller scale.

Restaurant 1777 occupies the building’s earliest wing, where centuries-old stonework forms one wall of the dining room. The kitchen works a menu built around Garden Route produce and the day’s coastal catch. Breakfast is included; dinner fills the room at peak season. The novelist Pauline Smith stayed in the building in 1913 and described its thick-walled cool. The dining room makes the same impression a century later.

The Sanctuary Spa sits in a converted 1870s structure that served variously as a schoolhouse and a chapel barn. Three treatment rooms is modest, and peak-season demand fills them, but the heritage setting is distinctive rather than generic.

Under the milkwood canopy, the pool is unheated and therefore decorative from May to September, usable the rest of the year. For winter months, the spa and the main lounge fireplace share the burden.

Activities

The Old Rectory’s primary function is positional: it puts you within walking distance of Blue Flag beaches with a beach kit packed, a picnic basket if you want one, and a concierge who handles the Garden Route logistics that would otherwise consume the holiday. The building itself tells a story worth hearing, and the property offers heritage walks through the building’s origins for those who ask. Beyond this, Plettenberg Bay is the activity. The hotel is the base from which you do it.