Big Hole
Interesting facts
- Diamonds on Colesberg Kopje were found in 1871 by Esau Damoense, cook to Fleetwood Rawstorne's Red Cap Party, who had reportedly been sent there as a punishment.
- Within a month of the find some 900 claims had been pegged on the little hill, worked by 2,000 to 3,000 men.
- The Earl of Kimberley, Britain's Colonial Secretary, disliked both New Rush and the Dutch name Vooruitzigt, so the camp was named after him in July 1873.
- The diamond-bearing rock kimberlite takes its name from this town and its pipes.
- Early miners dug crumbly yellow ground and feared the diamonds ended there, until they discovered the hard blue ground beneath was just as rich.
- The Tiffany Yellow Diamond, 287.42 carats in the rough, was found around 1878, probably in the Kimberley mine, and later worn by Audrey Hepburn.
- In September 1882 the diamond town became the first in the Southern Hemisphere to light its streets with electricity.
- South Africa's first stock exchange, the Kimberley Royal Stock Exchange, opened in the boom town in February 1881.
Why it is worth it
The Big Hole in Kimberley is what remains of one of the great rushes of the nineteenth century. In 1871 diamonds were found on a small hill, Colesberg Kopje, on the farm of the De Beer brothers, and within weeks the hill was carved into hundreds of claims. The camp of diggers, called New Rush, grew to around 50,000 people and was renamed Kimberley in 1873 after the British Colonial Secretary. Diggers worked by hand with picks and shovels, and the hill turned into a pit.
By the time open-cast work ended in 1914, over 22 million tonnes of rock had been removed and about 3,000 kilograms of diamonds recovered, around 14.5 million carats. The hole has a surface area of about 17 hectares and is about 463 metres across, with a perimeter of about 1.6 kilometres. It was dug to around 240 metres, then partly filled with debris; about 40 metres of water now lie at the bottom, and around 175 metres of sheer wall are visible. For a long time it was called the largest hand-dug excavation on Earth, a title that research has since shared with other South African diamond mines. Below the open pit, De Beers followed the kimberlite pipe underground to more than 1,000 metres.
The history of the hole is also a history of power and labour. The scattered claims were consolidated into De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1888 under Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit and Barney Barnato. Tens of thousands of black migrant workers laboured in dangerous and unsanitary conditions, accidents and disease killed many, and the segregated housing built for workers here have been seen as one of the roots of the later apartheid city.
After mining stopped, the pit itself became an attraction. A mine museum grew from the 1960s and was substantially redeveloped by De Beers in the early 2000s. Today a viewing platform juts out over the rim, the end of it the size of a nineteenth-century claim, and there are exhibitions on the diamond story, a recreated mine shaft, a vault with real diamonds, and old Kimberley buildings brought together in a period streetscape.
Getting there
The Big Hole is in the centre of Kimberley, Northern Cape, about 0.8 km from the city centre. Kimberley Airport (KIM) is about 7.4 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Kimberley Mine or Tim Kuilmine is an open-pit and underground mine in Kimberley, South Africa. It has been considered the deepest hole excavated by hand, contending the title with Jagersfontein Mine.
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