station was one of very great importance to the British Empire. The
North American (with which it was later united) was then considered a
fine station for making prize-money, but the West Indies was, to use
Nelson’s own words, “the station for honour.” Earlier in the century,
however, riches had been added to honour for those who held command at
Jamaica.
In addition to the naval station at Port Royal (where the commodore on
the station till recently resided at Admiralty house), there were for
many years to the west of Kingston a dockyard at Greenwich (with a depot
for military stores, and a hospital, as well as a cemetery attached)
which was the point of embarkation for the naval authorities; and a pen
residence for the commander-in-chief near Kingston, known as =Admiral’s
Pen=. At times the admiral on the station had a house in the hills, and
there was at one period a naval convalescent hospital (now called The
Cottage) in the St. Andrew mountains.
The earliest record of a suggestion for a permanent residence for the
admiral on the station is to be found in the will of Zachary Bayly (the
uncle of Bryan Edwards the historian) who offered Greenwich Park,
situated between Admiral’s Pen and Greenwich, near Kingston, to the
government “for the use and residence of a Governor, or of the
Commander-in-chief for the time being, of His Majesty’s ships of war
employed or kept upon this station,” at a reduction of £1000 sterling on
a just valuation. This offer, which Bryan Edwards, as executor, made to
the House of Assembly in 1770, was not accepted.
But in 1773 the House resolved “that a sum not exceeding £2500
(currency) be laid out in purchasing the house and pen in the parish of
St. Andrew, where Sir William Burnaby, Admiral Keppel, and Admiral Parry
formerly lived, to be annexed to the Government for the use of the
Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty’s ships of war on this station.”
Admiral’s Pen was bought on January 13, 1774, by Jasper Hall, _et al._,
commissioners for purchasing a pen for the admiral on the station, from
John Dalling, _et ux._, for the sum of £2500 (currency). This was
Lieut.-Colonel Dalling, who was then lieutenant-governor. Its purchase
was no doubt due to Rodney, who was then the admiral on the station. As
he left, however, in that year, Gayton, commodore at Jamaica in 1776–78,
was probably the first admiral to inhabit it as an official residence.
Gayton was followed by, amongst others, Sir Peter Parker, Joshua Rowley,
Gardner, Affleck, Sir Hyde Parker, Lord Hugh Seymour, Sir J. T.
Duckworth, Dacres, Cochrane, Douglas and Popham. In November 1829
Admiral Fleeming reported that Admiral’s Pen was “ruinous and
uninhabitable.”
[Illustration:
ADMIRAL’S PEN
]
On May 20, 1863, Thomas Cushnie, for the Executive Committee of the
Government, bought it for £600 (sterling). It is now used as a Union
Poorhouse for Kingston and St. Andrew. Its whitewashed walls and stones
along the drive recall the coastguard stations of England, and keep
alive the memory of its connection with the navy of Great Britain at a
period of some of its brightest achievements.
To Admiral’s Pen in 1780 Nelson was brought, after a short sojourn at
Port Royal, on his return from the San Juan expedition, and, weak from
fever and dysentery, was tenderly nursed by Lady Parker and her
housekeeper, Mrs. Yates, while even the admiral himself took his turn in
sitting up with the patient. We are told that Nelson’s aversion from
taking medicine was so great that they had to send it to him by the hand
of the admiral’s youngest daughter. On June 11 Nelson went up to the
admiral’s hill residence, or “Admiral’s Mountain,” as he calls it in a
letter to his friend Hercules Ross.
Lady Nugent, in her “Journal of a Voyage to and Residence in the Island
of Jamaica,” refers to the Admiral’s Pen more than once. On September
13, 1804, when Sir John Thomas Duckworth was admiral, she writes:
Breakfast at 8, as usual. Have at 11 a second breakfast of fruit,
wine, cake, etc., and at 12 all set off for the Admiral’s Penn; Lady
M[argaret Cameron, wife of the Governor of the Bahamas], her young
people, and myself, in the sociable, with our two black postillions in
scarlet liveries, but with black ancles peeping out of their
particulars, and altogether rather a novel sort of appearance, to
Europeans just arrived. General N. and Mr. Cameron in the curricle.
Aides-de-camp, servants, etc., in kittareens, and on horseback; and
all arrived in grand procession at the Admiral’s at about 3.
Refreshments were ready, and then we all creolized till 5 o’clock. A
large party, of the Navy chiefly, at dinner. Cards; and to bed soon
after ten.
The banquets and other ceremonies that have taken place within the walls
of Admiral’s Pen must have been excelled in splendour only by those of
King’s House, Spanish Town, in its palmiest days.
[Illustration:
ROCK FORT
]
“Long before Kingston had been settled as a town,” says the late Mr. G.
F. Judah in his “Rock Fort, Fort Castile, Fort Nugent” (Kingston, 1906),
“Rock Fort, with its surroundings then lying in both the old parishes of
Port Royal and St. Andrew, had acquired a name and reputation of its
own.”
Though not one of the earliest spots to be defended in Jamaica under
British rule, =Rock Fort=, at Harbour Head (not to be confounded with
Rocky Fort on the Palisadoes), which commands the approach to Kingston
from the east, or windward as it was commonly called in the days of
sailing-ships, came into importance before the close of the seventeenth
century. It was first fortified as a protection against the threatened
French invasion from San Domingo, under Du Casse in 1694; and enlarged
and strengthened from time to time. It was manned in 1865, when it was
feared that the rising in St. Thomas would spread to Kingston. Near Rock
Fort is the site of a =Naval Watering Place=, established by Admiral
Vernon in 1739–42, where Rodney later added a conduit, still to be seen,
for the conveyance of fresh water from the spring to the shore. Sir
James Castile, a native of Barcelona but a naturalised Englishman, who
had come to Jamaica as agent for the Assiento Company of Spain, which
had the exclusive right to import slaves and other objects from Africa
to the Spanish West Indies, and to which was joined the Royal African
Company of England, received his letters of naturalisation in March,
1684–85; and in the July following he acquired land in Port Royal, where
he established offices for his company, which he could not have done had
he been an alien. In 1690 he purchased 300 acres of land in the old
parish of Port Royal (now St. Andrew), near Harbour Head, and in the
following year he acquired one hundred more in St. Andrew near by. In
September 1693 letters patent were issued by the governor, Sir William
Beeston, authorising Castile “to enclose his dwelling house at Three
Rivers in the Parish of St. Andrews, with imbattled walls for the
security and defence of his said house and plantation and negroes and
the parts adjacent, against their Majesty’s Enemys”; and thus arose Fort
Castile, about a mile and a quarter beyond Rock Fort. In the June
following, under fear of French invasion, with the defences of Port
Royal ruined by the recent earthquake, Colonel Lawes “drew lines and
secured a narrow pass to the eastward of Kingston,” and this became Rock
Port, and Du Casse was led to make his attack to the west of St. Jago de
la Vega at Carlisle Bay. Sir James assisted not only at Rock Fort, but
also at his own dwelling; “having garrisoned and provided his house,
which was well walled and guarded for a defence, they built a regular
fort on the parade.”
In 1702 Castile petitioned the House of Assembly in respect to the great
charge he had been put to in building Fort Castile, and the House voted
him £500 in compensation. He died in 1709, and in 1711 his widow
petitioned for consideration in view of the fact that for five years the
fort was occupied by her Majesty’s forces, “during which time it ran
greatly to ruin.”
From that time nothing is recorded of Rock Fort till 1753, when £300 was
voted for its defence (£7000 being voted for Mosquito Point, afterwards
called Fort Augusta); and thence onwards it is frequently reported on by
the various committees appointed from time to time to report to the
Assembly on the state of the fortifications and barracks of the island;
and in 1755 £5000 was voted to be expended on Rock Fort. The following
account of it is given by Long:
[Illustration:
FORT NUGENT IN 1908
]
It consists of two bastions, mounting twenty-one guns (twenty-four
pounders), and furnished with a small powder-magazine, and other
habiliments of war necessary for its defence. Upon the face of the
hill is a little battery of six guns, with traversed lines that lead
up to it. Outside the walls is a wet ditch, sunk lower than the
surface of the water in the harbour; so that it may be occasionally
filled. The fort is provided also with a drawbridge towards the
Eastern road; casemates for lodging the men; and a house for the
officers. It is too small to admit a garrison of more than seventy
men: nevertheless, governor Kn[o]l[e]s was so confident of its
strength, that he maintained that it was capable of standing a siege
against ten thousand. It defends the access towards the town from the
Eastward, and would undoubtedly prove a great security against an
attack from that quarter; for the only way leading to it is narrow,
and confined a considerable length in a straight direction, exposed to
the whole fire of the fort, without a possibility of annoying it: nor
could trenches be formed, to carry on a regular approach, as the road
is all the way a shallow sand close by the water’s edge. A guard of
soldiers is always kept here; but the fort is said to be very
unhealthy to the men and their officers. The cause of this has by some
been imputed to their drinking from a brackish stream which runs near
it. Others ascribe it to the extreme heat reverberated down upon them
from the hill, which rises like a wall above the fort. And some have
thought it proceeded from a lagoon, which lies near the mouth of
Mammee River, about three miles to the Eastward. To corroborate the
latter opinion, is alleged the instance, mentioned by Lind, of
Whydaw-castle, on the coast of Africa; which has been rendered more
unhealthy than the Negroe-town in its neighbourhood by a flight of
circumstance unattended to at first. It is built on a small spot of
ground, which the sea breezes cannot reach without passing over a
little, inconsiderable brook of water, which produces some aquatic
plants always covered with a putrid slime. It is certain, from
constant experience, that places adjacent to a foul shore, or stagnant
waters, near the coast in the West Indies, are invariably unhealthful.
But, whatever be the cause, it deserves a minute enquiry of gentlemen
of the faculty, in order to its discovery; to the end that, if it
arises from some local evil, that cannot be remedied, the men might be
lodged at night in convenient huts, erected for them upon the
hill-side; by which means all of them, except those on immediate duty
in the fort, might enjoy a purer air, especially in those hours when a
depraved air is found to be most pernicious; for this is a post of so
much importance to the Town, that the men stationed here ought neither
to be disheartened by apprehensions, nor disabled by sickness, from
doing their regular duty. The assembly having lately granted 1500l.
for erecting barracks at this fort to contain two hundred men; if the
situation be properly attended to, the result will shew, whether the
unhealthiness of the garrison has been owing to a pestilent quality in
the air, or some other cause.
It is interesting to read Long’s reference to the lagoon, having in view
the unpleasant experiences which Kingston has had in recent years from
the smell of the Yallahs ponds from time to time, notably in 1906.
In 1805 fear of French invasion was very real in Jamaica, martial law
was proclaimed, and in December (before the news of Trafalgar reached
the island) a law was passed for purchasing Castile Fort and certain
lands (118 acres) surrounding it, for completing the works of that Fort,
and for putting the same on the Island establishment under the name of
=Fort Nugent=, in honour of Lieutenant-General George Nugent, then
lieutenant-governor. The martello tower hard by must have been built
about the same time. In 1865, owing to fear of a descent on Kingston by
the rioters of Morant Bay, the fort was manned by volunteers.
The view of the old guns lying about in picturesque confusion, shown in
the sketch (on the previous page) copied from a photograph taken in
1908, no longer exists, as the fort has since been reconstructed.
When the lands on the plain of Liguanea were divided amongst themselves
by Cromwell’s army of occupation, that part on which the =Constant
Spring= estate stands fell to the lot of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry
Archbould, a member of the first Council nominated in 1661. He married
in 1668 (he was her third husband and she was his second wife) the
mother of Sir Nicholas Lawes (afterwards governor of the colony), but
died in the following year, she surviving him twenty years. His son,
Colonel Henry Archbould, who had sat for St. George from 1680 to 1688,
was elected member of the Assembly for St. Andrew in 1701–2. His wife,
Joanna Wilhelmina, was sister to the wife and cousin of Sir Henry Morgan
(buccaneer and governor of Jamaica) and sister to the wife of Colonel
Robert Byndlos, chief justice. She obtained a patent of naturalisation
in August 1685. The second Colonel Archbould died in 1709, and was
buried in Halfway-Tree church. The first Colonel Archbould’s second son,
Major William Archbould, was member for St. Andrew in 1688. James
Archbould, the son of his second wife, was member for St. Andrew in
1702–4, but sat for St. David in 1713.
In 1759 a private Act was passed (we read in Feurtado’s “Official and
other Personages of Jamaica,” 1896) for the sale of certain lands in
Liguanea belonging to Henry Archbould, late of the said parish,
deceased, for payment of £8000 with interest, devised by the will of the
said Henry Archbould, to his daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Archbould, and
for other purposes.
In 1765 Constant Spring estate with some mountain land adjoining, called
Snow Hill, was (the writer was informed by Mr. G. F. Judah) sold by
Henry Archbould to Daniel Moore, who had in the previous year
provisionally leased the property. Daniel Moore, member of the Assembly
for St. Andrew from 1768 to 1781, who had done a thriving trade in
prizes and prize money in those privateering days, and was latterly
joined in business by Jasper Farmer, died in 1783–4, and his properties
formed part of his residuary estate. After his death there was a suit in
Chancery, “Maitland _vs._ Moore _et al_,” and in 1785 Constant Spring
and Snow Hill, with its slaves and other effects, were sold under a
decree of the Court at Riley’s tavern in Kingston for £33,000 current
money of the Island. It became afterwards the property of George
Cuthbert (who administered the government of Jamaica in 1832), who
mortgaged it for £77,000 to Alexandre Lindo, a retired merchant; the
latter sold the mortgage debt in 1810 to his son, Abraham Alexandre
Lindo, the proprietor of Kingston Pen.
It was during the ownership of Daniel Moore in 1770 that an Act was
passed empowering him to bring, by means of a tunnel through the
mountain range and an aqueduct, the water of the Wag Water (the Agua
Alta of the Spaniards) to his estate, which means now serve in part to
supply the town of Kingston with water. It was entitled “An Act to
enable Daniel Moore, Esquire, to take up a sufficient quantity of water
for turning mills for grinding sugar-canes, out of or from Agua Alta
River, commonly called Wag Water River, in the parish of St. Andrew; and
to convey the same to his works on the plantation in the said parish,
called Constant Spring.”
In 1898 the original brick-lined tunnel, which is about half a mile in
extent, was straightened in parts, and converted into a concrete pipe of
six feet diameter. The proposal to supply Kingston with water from the
Wag Water was first made, it is interesting to note, as early as 1798.
In 1811 there were on the estate 401 slaves and 22 head of stock.
As the result of legal proceedings of a protracted character the estate
about 1832 became the property of Mrs. Jasper Farmer Cargill (_née_ Jane
Marston), when there were 312 slaves and 31 head of stock; the only
estate in the lowland district of St. Andrew with more slaves being
Hope.
It later passed into the hands of Chrystie and Porteous, merchants of
Kingston, the memory of this ownership still living in the title
Porteous’s Pen, applied to a lower and now distinct part of the
property. In the ‘seventies it was owned by a Captain Carson, a son of a
member of the above-named firm.
In the year 1888 the American Hotels company was formed in Jamaica,
principally with Jamaica capital, and properties were acquired and two
or three hotels were started, Constant Spring amongst the number. When
the Jamaica Exhibition of 1891 was in preparation, the Government,
thinking there was not enough hotel accommodation, passed the Hotels
Companies law, and the directors of the Constant Spring hotel, as it was
not paying as well as was anticipated, mortgaged it to the Government,
to whom they subsequently handed it over. Golf links and tennis courts
now usurp the place of cane-fields. The hotel since that date afforded a
pleasant temporary home for numberless visitors to the island.
At the commencement of the nineteenth century Constant Spring estate was
the place selected for his experiments in the improvement of the
manufacture of sugar and rum by Dr. Bryan Higgins (miscalled “Wiggins”
in Gardner’s “History of Jamaica”), the celebrated physician and
chemist, who came to Jamaica in 1797 at the instance of the West India
Committee (as related in the issue of the “Circular” for November 6,
1906).
On March 4, 1801, the House of Assembly resolved, “That a Committee be
appointed to visit Constant Spring estate in Liguanea, on Monday, the
9th instant, to inspect what improvements Dr. Higgins has effected there
in the manufacture of sugar and rum, and to report their opinion thereon
to the House.”
[Illustration:
RAYMOND HALL
]
On the 13th of that month the Committee made a lengthy report, in which
it stated that:
“As Doctor Higgins has exemplified practically what theoretically he has
detailed in print, the Committee deem it unnecessary to lay before the
House in their report a more particular account of what they have seen
and so satisfactorily approve.
“That the Committee lament that they have to state to the House that the
infirm state of Doctor Higgins’s health obliges him to return to England
this year; his assiduous and indefatigable exertions, both of body and
mind, in the public service ever since his arrival, of which every
gentleman with whom he has by turns resided is a witness, have been too
much for his weak frame and advanced years, and render the change of
climate necessary.”
“The observations and Advices for the Improvement of Muscavado Sugar and
Rum by Bryan Higgins, M.D.,” was published in the “Columbian Magazine”
in Kingston in 1798.
Constant Spring forms part of the scene of a tale by Captain
Brooke-Knight, entitled “The Captain’s Story, or Adventures in Jamaica
Thirty Years Ago,” which appeared in the “Leisure Hour,” illustrated by
(Sir) John Gilbert, in 1859–60, and was afterwards published in book
form with the same illustrations about 1880, under the title “The
Captain’s Story, or Jamaica Sixty Years Since.” At the time of the story
(1832) Constant Spring, which is in it called “Running Water,” was, as
is mentioned above, the property of Mrs. Cargill; and Judge Jasper
Farmer Cargill figures in the work as Mr. Jasper. The author, Captain
Brooke-Knight, who appears as Lieutenant Brook, married Miss Marston.
The original Constant Spring works stood to the east of the new main
road to Stony Hill, about seven miles from Kingston, just below the
aqueduct. They were later removed to the other side of the road lower
down the hill, near the end of the car line, where they still stand in
ruins; and traces of the stone guttering connecting the old works with
the new may still be seen on the east side of the main road. The late
Dr. Cargill stated (in an article on “The Captain’s Story” which
appeared in the “Journal of the Institute of Jamaica” in 1896) that the
great house stood a little below the aqueduct. Mr. Soutar, however, says
that the house at Spring Garden was the original great house. The
remains of a substantial though short flight of stone steps (marking,
Mr. Soutar says, the old still-house) exist to-day just above the
reservoirs, commanding one of the finest views to be obtained on the
higher slopes of the plain of Liguanea. These old aqueducts, which
enhance the beauty of many a Jamaica landscape, besides telling of the
day when sugar was king, afford the best examples of architecture to be
found in the island.
It was at Constant Spring hotel in 1894 that “Alice Spinner” wrote a
“Study in Colour,” one of the best pictures of negro character sketched
by an English pen; and the hotel figures in the story as Summerlands
Hotel, where “no ill-cooked stew or muddy coffee could rob the glorious
mountains of their jewelled peak.”
=Olivier Road=, near Constant Spring, helps to record the fact that Sir
Sydney Olivier, when colonial secretary, lived near by. It is the only
publicly-given name after a colonial secretary.
Although of late, writers, misled by Anthony Trollope’s doubting
reference to the story, and by a misreading of Froude’s words, have
attempted to prove that “Tom Cringle’s Log,” a work which brought
literary fame to Michael Scott at a bound, was probably written in
Glasgow in the intervals of business, and although it is possible he may
have rewritten in that city the chapters to suit the pages of
“Blackwood,” there seems very good evidence still obtainable that the
original studies of Jamaica life and character, which have delighted
three or four generations of readers, were actually written in Jamaica.