Overlooked Britain
English corner of a Caribbean field
lucinda lambton Barbados said goodbye to the Queen last year – but remains full of British architectural gems On 30th November last year, in front of Prince Charles, Barbados replaced its head of state with a president – Sandra Mason. Still, lots of the island’s 17th-, 18thand 19th-century British buildings, great and small, not only survive but thrive. What a huge pleasure it is to discover them all. Patrick Leigh Fermor was spot-on in The Traveller’s Tree (1950): ‘In nothing is the illusion of England so compelling as in the parish churches of Barbados. They stand alone in the canefields, their battlemented belfries and vanes and pinnacles appearing over the sheltering tops of clumps of trees.’ Despite the odious nature of slavery, apparent when these churches were built, many of them are wholeheartedly glorious. So deep is the pleasure of coming upon them that they quite sear themselves into your senses. Today, when seeing a church in England, I have many a time actually found myself momentarily confused as to whether I had suddenly arrived in the Caribbean! Few sights are as magical as these buildings found so far from home, yet so English in their every detail. Take the Gothic Parliament of 1872, with its assembly of stained-glass windows of the English monarchs – from James I to Queen Victoria – alongside, lo and behold, Oliver Cromwell. There is only one other such assembly like it in the world – to be found, if you please, in Rochdale’s Town Hall! Thanks to these delights, the Barbados National Trust was created in 1947 ‘to preserve the unique heritage of our island home, be it historic buildings, places of natural beauty or the island’s flora and fauna’. It has triumphed to this day. HURRAY! It was founded by Ronald Tree, who built the exquisite neoclassical villa Heron Bay on the seashore. The island was at the forefront of the British Caribbean from the start. It was the first place to establish the industry of sugar and slaves. For 20 riches-soaked 90 The Oldie March 2022
Marble bas-relief of King’s Lynn, 1687 Below: Oliver Cromwell in stained glass, Barbados Parliament, Bridgetown
years, it was the only West Indian supplier of sugar to a Europe that was forever licking its lips with longing for the sweet stuff. Barbados was therefore the first island to breed the Caribbean ‘plantocracy’, monied men whose show of voluptuous opulence often excelled that of the grandees of the motherland. Fine buildings proclaiming their importance were bound to be the result. In the humid heat of the Caribbean, the English lived in a manner that bordered on sheer lunacy. Determined literally to keep the home fires burning, they built fireplaces into their brick-built houses and put glass windows – not considering there was such a thing as shutters – into their low-ceilinged homes. The 17th-century historian Richard Ligon complained that with the low ceilings he could hardly keep his hat on! What treasures survive on the island. Take the 1687 marble bas-relief of Norfolk’s King’s Lynn – ‘Lynn Regis’. It’s a delicately carved townscape, crammed with an assembly of buildings worked in fine and historically interesting detail. This bas-relief originally hung in the front hall of Holborn, one of the earliest
houses in Barbados, built in the early17th century. In 1958, it was demolished to make way for the building of Deep Water Harbour – the Port of Bridgetown, today the heart of the island’s trade. The marble was rescued and is now safe and sound in the care of the exemplary Barbados Museum and Historical Society, in the building that was originally the Garrison’s military prison. Built of the palest yellow brick and grey stone, it was designed in the early-19th century and extended in 1853. It was taken over as ‘the home of Barbadian culture and heritage’ in 1933 and has since amassed a vast collection of some 5,000 artefacts dating from prehistoric times to the 21st century. The most gratifying painting in the museum is the anonymous portrait of the planter Seal Yearwood and his servant. It’s a quite glorious glimpse of an 18th-century grandee of the Barbadian