From the Blog: Great Houses, Great Hikes

[rastagirl777]

My first visit to the Great House in Whitehall coincided with my first experience at the Negril Fat Tyre Festival. For the nine years that the festival took place, The Great House served as a gathering/viewing point and the starting point of the Downhill Race.

The Great House (known as the Parkinson Great House, the Spice Factory and the Whitehall Great House) was built around 1790 by Robert Parkinson who was a successful sugar plantation owner in absentia and retired in Jamaica. The estate boasted fine carved Georgian Mahogany archways and paneling as well as elegant black and white marbled floors. Robert died at the age of 42 leaving the estate to his brother Ralph.

While Ralph was living there he followed the “custom of the country” in which the British Planters kept a bi-racial mistress (known then as “a housekeeper”). Her name was Betty Grant, a “freed coloured woman” whom he’d bought from the Tryall Estate and then set free. Together Betty and Ralph had four children. When he died in 1806 his will stipulated that Betty receive 50 pounds per year for the rest of her life as well as seven house slaves and all the furniture from his bed chamber. Each of the children were left 2,000 pounds and sent to England to be properly educated. It was Ralph’s wish that the children never return to Jamaica. Because they were three-quarter white, he knew they would “pass” for 100% white in England where in Jamaica they would be outcasts. Because Ralph and Betty were never legally married, he was forced to leave the estate to his nearest living white relative. His brother Leonard has made a great fortune in Jamaica and chose to use that fortune to further is success in England. Ralph thus passed over his successful brother and left the Great House and the estate to his favorite nephew Matthew who was already living in Jamaica at that time.
It was only upon Matthew’s death in 1815 that the estate passed from the Parkinson family into other hands. It somehow “fell” into the hands of John Altham Graham.

And this friends, is where the Google trail goes cold. Subsequent searches and research unveiled that the Jamaican Government took over the property in 1971 from William Cargill. It had a brief life as a disco in the early 1980′s and the last ownership recorded in cyber-space had it belonging to an American from Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 1985 the Great House was gutted by fire. Today what remains is the stone shell of what was once a most elegant manor. In parts of the “building” you can still see where the marble floor tiles lay. As you walk through the ruin you can almost feel the splendor of what it once was. Now it is a “ruin”, a monument to the British Colonial days two hundred years ago.

When I was last there the property looked to be maintained. The lawn was mowed and there used to be a picnic table and rope swing from where you could take in the view. It is one of the best views in the Negril area; sweeping across the Great Morass, Great Morass, Long Bay and Negril’s famous white sand beach.

On the other side of the building stands a Cottonwood Tree that is reported to be 900 years old. Of course, no one knows for sure – I’ve been told it was anywhere from 600-1200 years old. Splitting hairs really – that tree has borne witness to the construction of the house, all of its life and inhabitants, its disco, its fire and now stands over it like some huge guardian angel, branches spread wide ready to give the visitor a bear hug.
Sadly, visiting this quite interesting place just a few minutes outside of Negril is no longer an option for me. While the tree wasn’t looking a group of friends we’d sent up there to check the place out were robbed at gunpoint, the thieves using the stoic ruin as a hide-out to ambush them. I’ve not sent anyone else there, nor have I returned since.