St. Helena Gold Mine

St. Helena Underground Wine Cellar


Useful Information

Location: Welkom, Lejeweleputswa District. 160 kilometers northeast of Bloemfontein.
(-27.9785413, 26.7375147)
Open: closed.
[2026]
Fee: closed.
[2026]
Classification: MineGold Mine
Light: LightElectric Light
Dimension:
Guided tours: D=2 h.
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address: Welkom Museum, Public Library, Civic Centre, Stateway, Welkom, Tel: +27-57-352-9244.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.
Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1947 Welkom founded following a major gold discovery.

Description

St. Helena Gold Mine was a working gold mine located at Welkom, the state capital. It was possible to visit the mine and its wine cellar at 857 m below the surface, which was said to be the worlds’ deepest wine cellar. However, the mine is closed the tours are discontinued. There were six operating gold mines in and around Welkom some years ago, each offering guided tours of the mine site and also underground. Those guided tours were organized on weekdays, although the tours took place on different days and at different times. All of them are closed now, there is no possibility any more to visit any mine. We have no idea why this happened, probably new safety regulations, the reason was never published. It seems some of the mines were not profitable any more and were closed before the gold price started to increase. Today there are still at least five active mines, most of them operated by Harmony Gold. They do not offer any tours though.

The city is actually quite interesting, as Welkom was planned completely as a miner’s town, before the first brick was laid. The architect was Sir Ernest Oppenheimer who then was Anglo-American Chairman. The result is called Garden City, where mining and industrial areas blend harmoniously with the rest of the city. It is often visited by people interested in the innovative traffic control. The city was planned so well, that there are almost no stop signs, and very few traffic lights, traffic is mostly handled by roundabouts.

In the Welkom Library is the Gold Museum located, which is an exhibition about the local gold mining. It is also sometimes called Welkom Museum. Unfortunately, there is not a single line of actual information on the web, they are only mentioned by websites citing other websites. Not even the website of the library or the Matjhabeng Municipality Tourism Office lists further details. There is no info on tourist portals like tripadvisor. The online impression of this state is that tourism was shut down completely. While this is most likely not the case, it seems to us that all three tourist sites of Welkom from the 20th century are actually closed, which is quite sad.