GOLDEN GROVE

HISTORY WITHIN A HOUSE

Geology: the rock supporting the house is the

“Golden Grove Terrace”, scientifically dated

Human “Pre-history”: the earliest inhabitants of

Barbados “Amerindians” lived close by Golden Grove

attracted by the water of the Three Houses spring

Recorded history: early British colonists also came

to the spring with settlement in 1639 by Capn Skeete

Golden Grove became a separate plantation in 1674

A pivotal moment for the island of the slave revolt in

1816 ended largely at Golden Grove

In 1908 a famous philanthropist and politician,

Florence Daysh, was born at Golden Grove

The Great House today is structurally very similar to

when she was born so that a visit to Golden Grove

echoes the gentility of that era

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Geology

Time has a geologic scale.

The“Quaternary” period began c. 2.5

million years ago and developed into a

warmer or “interglacial” period called

the Holocene epoch around 11,000 years

ago, enabling the rise of human

civilisation.

The epoch prior to this is known as the

“Pleistocene”. The rocky area around

Golden Grove was created in the Middle

Pleistocene. A team of American

scientists analysed coral deposits from

the “Golden Grove Terrace” in 1990,

dating them as 230,000-216,000 years

old (shown on the map).

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Geology (continued)

The corals analysed at Golden Grove

were:

Acropora Palmata (or “Elkhorn” –first

right, once prolific but now on the

Endangered Species list) and

Montastrea Cavernosa (or “Great

Star”- next right, the predominant

coral at 40 to 100 below sea level

Coral terraces in Barbados like

Golden Grove are in geological terms

very “young” but have been formed

adjacent to rock that is much older- in

the Scotland district being perhaps

over 40 million years old.

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Water and Food : The Arrival of Humans

Human settlement has two requirements: potable water and

access to food.

The area around Golden Grove provides both: its current

northern boundary is Three Houses stream, fed from a spring

nearby. A little further north-east is a bay where fishermen

still set out to sea.

Pre-colonial human activity in this locality is perhaps no

surprise. However archaeological research of Amerindian

settlements in Barbados found few remains inland so that

the site by the spring of Three Houses is important.

A new excavation in 2015 would be very lucky to find an

example as famous as the “Conch Man” (right)!

Why the Amerindians left Barbados remains a mystery- but

knowledge of Barbados from the Lokono in Guyana remained

- they knew how to navigate the difficult waters of its eastern

shores. The ancient name for Barbados, Ichirouganaim, may

have meant “island with white teeth” or reefs.

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English Settlement (arrived 1625, settled 1627)

The first known map by Ligon is shown opposite. In 1630 Captain Henry Hawley was made Governor of Barbados. Hawley cashed in by selling land to new English colonists, arriving to make their fortune. Captain Francis Skeete purchased 4,500 acres of land from Governor Hawley in 1638 (right of the camels!) Legitimacy of this huge deal was questioned in a commission of 1640. Only land that now includes Three Houses, Thicketts, Wiltshire and Golden Grove plantations (substantial at 1,160 acres) proved legal.

Whilst Skeete continued in occupation, he was broke and mortgaged 500 acres to his brother-in-law William Hilliard in 1643 shortly before his death, aged only 31. Hilliard then funded his sister’s new husband and his two young nephews to take over Three Houses. Skeete is remembered in the name of the local bay. His journey from life in Surrey to plantation ownership was indeed a “one-way ticket”.

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English Settlement (continued) Early plantations grew a variety of cash crops, initially tobacco and cotton. In the 1640s planters discovered how to grow sugar well and land prices soared. In a lease of Three Houses in 1658, the plantation includes sugar, indigo and cotton. Its inventory (right) includes 5 men & 5 women negroes, 5 cowes (sic) and 1 bull. The condescension to humanity is that each negro is named! At the end of the lease Negroes and Cattle had to be delivered back to the Lessor- or an equivalent number given fatalities. There can be no clearer indication of the mentality of the time.

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Sugar

Golden Grove became independent in 1674. “Ince”, another Captain, & his relations owned a house and 136 acre plantation till 1721. The triangular trade, guns to Africa, slaves to Barbados, sugar to England, created huge profits for larger landowners. The “ten-acre” or smaller settlers largely disappeared. Planters enjoyed a comfortable “family life”. Mary Ince married Robert Hackett in 1702. “Hacketts” passed in her will to Henry Evans, then to his nephew Walker, and in 1785 to Elliot Grasset, who seems unrelated.

For the slaves it was a different- and largely

unrecorded story. A slave song (right) from the

1770s, annotated by William Sharp, the

abolitionist, from conversations with a

secretary to the Governor of Barbados, tells of

the huge uncertainties of slave life.

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The Grassets, Golden Grove & Insurrection

Elliot Grasset, whose wealth from sugar sent his son to Eton, was borne illegitimate, but still from a planter family, earning a higher place by dint of knowledge and hard work. Hacketts was renamed “Golden Grove”- popular in the Caribbean. No doubt it was golden, for the Grasset family- both Elliot and his son William became members for St Philip of the Barbados Assembly, at a time when such honours were still reserved for the Plantocracy.

But the Grassets also endured the largest uprising Barbados has ever had. The slave revolt of 1816 is popularly known as the “Bussa revolt” after one of its leaders, who was a “senior” slave at Baileys, which borders Golden Grove. A Private Letter from a soldier stationed at St Ann’s Fort (fragments right) testifies how about 400 insurgents, assembled at Baileys, fled to “Mr Grasset’s” house, pursued by British soldiers.

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An Extraordinary Emblematic Flag What really drove the insurgents? The Private Letter mentions an “extraordinary emblematic flag” which they carried. A copy (right) taken from the British Library includes the words “Royal Endeavour”. Did the insurgents believe they had a legitimate claim authorised by the British (and that local planters were denying a freedom granted by the British Empire)? If so the words in the British soldier’s letter quoting the events at Golden Grove are poignant: “The insurgents did not think that our men (Bourbon Blacks) would fight against black men, but thank God they were deceived”: a double disappointment for the rebels, British soldiers attacked the insurgents and included within the ranks of the British were local black soldiers.

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Change and Chancery In the end, in a way the rebels were right. The British government did outlaw slavery in its Empire in 1834, after domestic religious and moral pressure and a final revolt in Jamaica. The planters- but not the slaves- received compensation. A devastating hurricane of 1831 had hit Barbados, including Golden Grove, parts of which today date from that time (the “Georgian” style shown opposite).

The Grasset family owned Golden Grove until 1854, selling for £10,000. Had their luck run out? 13 years later the property was sold again for £16,500 (with the same 287 acres). The second half of the 19th century saw two registrations in the debtor-ridden Chancery Court for Golden Grove, indicating problems for the estate as ownership again changed hands. Plantations were often heavily mortgaged and the fall in sugar prices in this period took a heavy toll.

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Resilience and Reunion Another chapter for Golden Grove began in 1905 with its purchase by Howard Smith and Mr S. Browne, perhaps the principal financier. Howard Smith was a white planter who, against his class and colour, married a coloured woman, Eveline. It is said that many ostracised him but this did not seem to hinder his progress when sugar prices took a turn for the better and the resilience of planters shone through. Howard and Eveline had a daughter, Florence, born at Golden Grove in 1908. She was the most influential woman politician of her day in Barbados. Howard managed Golden Grove, Thicketts, Three Houses and Fortescue, in a syndicate with Brown that also owned Three Houses factory with its link to the railway (partly sold in a huge deal in 1920- above right)

Florence Daysh at Election Time In 1958 Florence, a noted philanthropist and OBE, was elected to the West Indies Federal Parliament, as the only woman from Barbados, defeating Errol Barrow. Previously she had been elected to the Vestry of St Philip and the Legislative Council, in both cases as only the second woman in a long parliamentary history. In her maiden speech to Parliament she declared: “I am a woman of colour, and proud of it.”

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The End of Plantation Life (at Golden Grove) Brown and the syndicate funding Three Houses et al must have considered Golden Grove surplus to their requirements as it was sold in 1921 for £16,000. The last chapter in Golden Grove’s history as a plantation began. Herbert and then his son Geoffrey Manning ran a plantation when St Philip was still full of sugar cane for about 50 years, including the hardship period of the 1930s. Geoffrey Manning was known as a keen sportsman- one founder of the Barbados Rally Club in 1957. By 1970 the economic viability of sugar at Golden Grove was finally in doubt. This was also the year that the sugar factory at Three Houses closed. The land at Golden Grove was apportioned to create smaller farming interests. Later it passed to a newer resident to the island, in the up-coming dominant industry of tourism and hospitality- its life today. And it is in this world that Golden Grove fits today.