A Bus Tour of Old Holetown

It may be a feature which occurs all too rarely, but there is nothing to beat the history lessons to be derived from a bus tour of Olde Holetown, the first town settled by the English in Barbados.
 

• The tour should rightly start near the Methodist Church at the corner of Lascelles, for it is here that the first English plantation was developed using the Indian River as a source of transport into the Hole, the landing place of the first settlers.
  As we travel south, the Hole Fort, first major fortification in Barbados was constructed where now sits the Police Station and Post Office. This is also the oldest continuous place of law, order and justice in Barbados.
• Next south is the old commercial complex which is now occupied by hotels, banks and restaurants on the seaside. The Holetown Jetty occupied this spot until about 1960
• Looking east at Cemetery road, one sees the wall of the Saint James Parish cemetery which was opened after the Cholera epidemic of the mid 1850’s. Along this same road is an old plantation Coopers’ Hill which disappeared 100 years ago.
• Further south at the Almond Beach complex is the old Parish Rectory, built some time in the mid eighteenth century.
• We turn left (east) at the next junction, but not before admiring the changes made at the original Corne Plantation which later became Sandy Lane Estates. Travelling east along what was the first commercial irrigation project in Barbados, we pass the lush golf courses, once Molyneux, Norwood and Bennet’s plantations.
• On Highway two we turn left towards St. Thomas Parish Church, one of the original six Barbados Parishes. And if we look east at that roundabout one will see the roof tops of Rock Hall, the first freedom village in Barbados.
• Just north of the Parish Church is the original Blowar’s Plantation, now the sugar museum and Sugar Factory. John Blowar arrived on the Courteen boat which left London in February, 1626/7.
• Just north of Blowers is Lancaster, site of Barbados’ worst traffic accident which, in 1945, claimed dozens of lives when a truck transporting sugar workers toppled into the ravine. Lancaster was owned by an early governor of Barbados, Samuel Barwick.
• The lands north of Lancaster formed part of the Indian Plantation eastward which culminated at what is now Springhead, Taitts, Apes Hill, Walter Hall.
• We travel west along the Westmoreland to Porters Road, where we soon encounter Sugar Hill, part of the Mount Standfast Plantation, originally known as Powell’s Plantation, the site of the first Governor’s house in Barbados.
• Porters Plantation on its left was the Holetown home of the famous Alleyne Family which was Barbados’s leading family for centuries. The Porters mansion started construction about 1660.
• Heron Beach was built as a Palladian mansion by Ronald Tree in 1947. It has housed royalty, both American and English.
• Folkestone mansion was built about 1750 as part of the Alleyne estates in Holetown. It also housed one of the early Barbados forts.
• God’s Little Acre was put into use as Barbados’ first parish Church as early as 1626/7. The incumbent, Revd Thomas Lane of Kent, was a formidable priest who intervened, in 1629, to stop the fighting between Courteen’s Northern men and Wolverston’s Bridgetown settlers. 
• On the hill above the schools stands Trents Plantation House, built in the 18^th century, but on that hill the first standard was raised by John Powell in 1626/7. Trents and Porters combined for a few months as the Fort Plantation, and remained the military lookout until Powell built his family holdings at Mt. Standfast.
• The Hole or Holetown River was once a much larger stream bed which continues to be fed by rain waters from as far east as St Andrew and St. Joseph. “Modernisation” and neglect have taken their toll on the spot at which Henry Powell twice visited Barbados in July 1625 and then in 1626/7 at the very beginning of English Settlement of Barbados.
• The two streets next south of the River banks provided housing and commercial activity for the Early Settlers as the first two streets built in English Barbados.

We are therefore back where we started, but there is much more you can learn about Holetown, Barbados’ Settlement town. The publication “Holetown, Barbados, Settlement Revisited” (2004 mgevents@usa.net ) is available at bookstores in Holetown. It gives in much more detail, an overview of Holetown, before Settlement to present.