Where the Bvumba's cloud forest meets the escarpment, a hotel that has kept its 1946 manners: table d'hôte dinner, tea on the Terrace, a fire in the lounge on cold nights. Guests have the run of the estate, the golf course, the game park and the Castle sundowner at no charge, thirty kilometres of mountain road from Mutare and 290 km from Harare.
The Seymour-Smith family open Leopard Rock with room for forty guests and a nine-hole course, at 4,745 feet on the flank of Chinyakwaremba. Their own house, the Castle, stands on the ridge above.
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret arrive from Umtali on the Royal Tour of Southern Rhodesia. The official programme lists the day at Leopard Rock with no engagements. British Pathé filmed the party on the tower steps and the Queen Mother in the rock garden.
The Taberer family buy the hotel and adds the bedroom wing that takes it to 120 guests. The eighteenth hole carries his name.
Peter Matkovich's eighteen-hole course opens on Penncross bent greens. In July 1993, on her visit to Zimbabwe, Diana, Princess of Wales, is photographed repeatedly in a Leopard Rock T-shirt.
Named Best Resort Hotel by the Association of Zimbabwe Travel Agents in both years, following the relaunch under Cambria Africa.
The closing negotiations of Zimbabwe's new Constitution are held in the room now named for it. CNN Travel names the course one of the ten best in Africa.
The Castle returns to the estate and reopens as a venue.
There is nowhere more beautiful in Africa.Attributed to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother after her stay in July 1953
