The earliest inhabitants of the valley lived here at least 700 000 years ago. Artefacts from the Early, Middle and Late Stone Ages have been discovered on the mountain slopes and the river plains. For tens of thousands of years small bands of hunter-gatherers roamed the Cape hunting game, fishing and foraging for plant foods.

According to the title deed for Boschendal, estate dates back to 1685, one of the first in the valley. However the first owner, Jean le Long, was a Huguenot and is more likely to have come out with the main group of Huguenots from 1688 onwards.

In 1715 the farm was bought by Abraham de Villiers, together with an unnamed adjacent piece of land granted to Nicolas de Lanoy. The De Villiers were among a band of 250 Huguenot refugees who settled at the Cape in the late 17th century. They were Protestants and had fled France because of religious persecution. In 1685 King Louis XIV outlawed their religion, causing thousands of Huguenots to take refuge in Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, Britain and Germany. The de Villiers originally came from Champagne in the north of France but moved to a safe haven, La Rochelle, on the west coast, before fleeing to the Netherlands. They were recruited by the Dutch East India Company for their wine farming experience and set sail for the Cape on the ship, Zion, arriving here in May 1689 Abraham's brother Jacques bought the extended farm in 1717 and it remained in his family until 1879.

Eight years later the mining magnate, Cecil John Rhodes, bought Boschendal, one of more than twenty farms that he acquired in the Drakenstein valley and established Rhodes Fruit Farms.

After Rhodes's death in 1902, the De Beers mining company continued to manage the farms for forty years, it was then sold to Sir Abe Bailey and afterwards to a syndicate.

When Anglo-American Corporation took over the farms in 1969 they decided to redevelop wine farming in the area by introducing high quality plant material. The old Boschendal complex was restored by the architect Gawie Fagan and his wife Gwen Fagan laid out an old fashioned rose garden.

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