The old Gunpowder Magazine was constructed on the crest of a barren hill to the north of the village in the 1830s in order to store gunpowder, resulting from the passing of an ordinance by the Colonial Administration regulating the safe storage of this volatile explosive. Charles Lennox Stretch, the Government Surveyor at Graaff-Reinet, surveyed the site on Crown Land and the Magazine was constructed in 1831.