The building stands on the slopes of Table Mountain, above Welgemeend, and is reached through an avenue of oaks that leads off Hof Street. The estate can be dated back to the years when Simon van der Stel was Governor of the Cape, and was granted on 22 October 1693 to Guillaum Heems who built one or two small buildings upon it. After two years he sold the property to Heinrich Bernhard Oldenland, an outstanding botanist of his time and employed as Master Gardener of the Company's garden. Oldenland died suddenly in 1697 and his wife sold the property to Fiscal Joan Blesius who probably built the first proper house upon the property and came to live on the site in 1701. After Blesius' death in 1714, the estate changed hands a number of times until it was bought by Johan Christiaan Brasler, who came from Copenhagen, and probably built the present main house. During the latter part of the 18th century, before the annexation of the Cape by Britain, the house was probably altered from its original single storey to a two storey flat-roofed structure, which remains its predominant outlook today. The outbuildings and slave quarters behind the main house probably date to a period between 1814 and 1825, when the property was owned by the Zorn family. During the 19th century the estate was sold a number of times, one of its owners being Christoffel Joseph Brand (1841-48), who was father of Jan Brand, President of the Orange Free State. In 1839 a second building, known as La Belle Alliance, was built on its land, and by the end of the 19th century expansion of the nearby city forced the sale of large parts of the farming estate. In 1936 it was acquired by the Provincial Administration and became the official residence of the Administrator of the Cape. It was declared a National Monument under old NMC legislation on 15 December 1966.

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