TOUR #1:

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Leave Silver Sands and go up the hill to the main road: turn left up to Duncans note the clock tower). There is an old cut-stone house (Great House?) behind the gas station. It presently belongs to Ms Dalyrumple. The town is said to be named after a Patrick Duncans who owned the property from 1784 (1).I note however the coincidence that William Knibb sailed to England "with Messrs.Duncan and Barry, of the Wesleyan body" (Phillippo p168) to present evidence after the militia had demolished 14 Baptist and 6 Wesleyan chapels after Christmas 1826 .
Turn left between the Post Office and the Police Station and go into the district of Kettering (named after the birthplace of William Knibb in England). Bear left at the crossroad and follow the road past the radio transmission tower to the hilltop where, on your right, you see cut-stone gateposts marked Kettering: the original house was given to Knibb by the freed slaves in appreciation of his efforts -and the persecution he had endured-on their behalf. The present house is clearly of recent construction on the original site but the history is betrayed by the cut stone garage shell. A number of graves are located in the lot to the east of the house, including that of Knibb's son, also called William: it is said that Knibb elder was also buried here but that his remains were later transferred to Falmouth where they were re-interred in the William Knibb Memorial Church.Kettering should be a National monument!

From this 500ft vantage point you have a marvelous panoramic view of the coastline, including Silver Sands and, to the east, our next destination, which is Harmony Hall.

Go back down to the main road: turn left and note Kettering Baptist Church a few yards down on the left. Continue on about a mile towards the East until you come to a crossroad with dirt tracks leading to Lancaster on the right and Harmony Hall (see gateposts) on the left (North). These are privately owned estates and permission is required to visit. Harmony Hall was a sugar estate that converted to coconut production sometime after Emancipation and is now in cattle production. About a mile from the gate is a magnificent sugar factory dominated by a cut-stone chimney. Note the cattle mill to the southwest of the main factory and the two remaining tapered column of the drying house for trash (which would then be used for the furnace. Lancaster was the bigger of the two estates with about 1300 acres as opposed to 800 acres for HH. Lancaster had its own factory, windmill and wharf down at the boundary with Braco.

Leave HH and go back to the main road, turn right and drive back towards Duncans; the second building on the right is the Dewar Health Centre, donated by Dr Robert Dewar and family who owned HH in 1886. As you drive back through Duncans, we again see the clock tower that was also donated by Dewar, according to Knibb-Sibley. The marble plaque simply indicates "Donated by a citizen of this parish in memory of his wife who died in 1935. The clockwork mechanism still appears intact.

We now go down the road a mile or so to Refuge on the left and Stewart Castle on the right (north). Let's go to Stewart Castle first. This was an impressive cut-stone mansion designed like a fortress and owned by James Stewart, whose son, also James, was Custos of Trelawny from 1812 and who was instrumental in the establishment of Stewart Town, in Trelawny. The family is thought to have left Jamaica in the middle of the 19th century and the mansion is now almost completely ruined. It belongs to the National Trust and is, I believe, available for divestment. The land around is a land settlement. You can continue past the ruins down a footpath to a secluded fishermans' beach. West of the fishermans beach is the now-disused Salt Works with its evaporating ponds but this is accessed from the Coral Springs development.

Leaving Stewarts Castle we go back to the main road and turn left then right to go up the steep hill to Refuge,. Formerly called Wilberforce (see below) this village was renamed after William Knibb hid there while being chased by the militia. Visit the pretty church where many of the Veira family, who formerly owned the beach house to the east of Silver Sands are buried. If you have time you can drive through the properties of Oxford and Cambridge which were originally owned by two brothers. Oxford Great House recently (1997??) burned down. Or cut across the hills to Hyde Hall which is a quite substantial Great House now owned by the Long Pond Sugar Estate. The property was first owned by a Mr. James Hall from 1699, but the House was built in 1820. Notice the arches on the ground floor. These are very different from the beam and column type construction of earlier Great Houses and resemble the style of the Falmouth Court House, built four years earlier in 1816. Note the ruins of the windmill, the factory and a cattle mill, for use when the wind dropped, and the various out-buildings. Do not confuse this estate with the Hyde district of Clarks Town (about three miles away) which was named after Mr. George Hyde Clarke, onetime Custos and a member of the same family as Mr. G.M. Clarke who owned the Swanswick Estate and who gave land for the establishment of Clarks (formerly spelled Clarke's) Town in the post -emancipation Swanswick, Hyde Hall and Oxford are owned by Long Pond Estates Ltd

Some historical notes which will help:

The heyday of the sugar plantation was the last half of the eighteenth century, and it is during this period that most of the Great Houses in Trelawny were built. The nineteenth century saw their demise as Emancipation took place ("full free" on Aug 1 1938). During this period, Britain seems to have been at war with pretty well everybody! . From 1739 to 1763 and again in 1780-3 and then the Napoleonic Wars which ended in 1815 the British were almost continually at war with either the Spanish or the French or both

In Jamaica, various slave revolts had taken place over the years, but the most serious started with "Tacky's Rebellion" in 1760 and spread from the Port Maria area to many parts of the Island. A first war with the Maroons was settled in 1738 but a subsequent outbreak led to the Second Maroon War starting in July 1795. This war finished tragically with what seems to be a double cross of the Maroons by the British, who transported the Maroons (who had surrendered) to Nova Scotia. These wars are mentioned to set the scene for the forthcoming struggles and the eventual emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica. Note how the War of American Independence had just finished and the French Revolution was in full swing at this period and that Jamaica's neighbour, Haiti, was in the middle of its long war to obtain Independence. So the unease of the British colonists in Jamaica can well be imagined.

Note that sugar from Jamaica and other British colonies was protected by high tariff barriers in Britain, which were not to disappear for a hundred years, in 1846.

The 18th century was also an active period for religious "Dissenters" or "Reformers" or "Non-Conformists"-depending whose side you were on- and the first missionaries were the Moravians, in 1754, followed by Wesleyan Methodists and later by the Baptists. They taught Christianity to the slave and later took part in the emancipation struggle. The first step in the emancipation process was the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 after a long fight to win the support of the British people. A primary advocate in the British House of Commons was William Wilberforce who was to move his resolution for the abolition of the slave trade year after year from 1792 to 1807. One of the key players in Trelawny was the Baptist, Rev. William Knibb: he was born on 8th Sept 1803 in Kettering, Northampton, England and came to Jamaica as a teacher of slaves in Kingston (at the East Queen Street Baptist Church premises) in 1825 after the death of his brother Thomas. He was subsequently ordained and transferred to Savannah la Mar in 1827 to take charge of the Ridgeland Baptist Church and then moved to Falmouth in 1830.
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