Francia Great House is a historical plantation great house in Saint George, Barbados. It is on a wooded hillside near Gun Hill Signal Station. [1]
Francia Great House is a historical plantation great house in Saint George, Barbados. It is on a wooded hillside near Gun Hill Signal Station. [1]
It was completed at the end of the 19th century [2] or in the early 20th century [1] [3] [lower-alpha 1] by a Frenchman, René Mourraille, who had lived in Brazil. He met and married a Barbadian and settled in Barbados. It was one of the last plantations built in Barbados. [1] The plantation grew and exported yams, eddoes, and sweet potatoes. Sugar was not grown due to the reduction of the price of sugar internationally at the time the house was built. [4] From the time the house was constructed, it was owned by descendants of Mourraille. [3] By 2007, it had become a private school, [9] the Providence Elementary School. [7] [10]
The building reflects the owner's interest in French architecture in the triple-arched entrance, enclosed upper balcony, and "sweeping front staircase". [4] The house combines Barbadian coral stone craftsmanship, Demerara windows,[ citation needed ] and Brazilian wood panelling. [1] It has a collection of antique mahogany furniture and West Indian maps dating back to the early 16th century. [1] [4] It is set in terraced English-style gardens, with bougainvillea, hibiscus, and frangipani plants and a large mammee apple tree. [4] It also has orchards. [3] The Barbados National Trust designated it a house of architectural interest. [11]
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of 432 km2 (167 sq mi) and has a population of about 287,000. Its capital and largest city is Bridgetown.
Barbados is an island country in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, situated about 100 miles east of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Roughly triangular in shape, the island measures some 21 miles from northwest to southeast and about 14 miles from east to west at its widest point. The capital and largest town is Bridgetown, which is also the main seaport.
The music of Barbados includes distinctive national styles of folk and popular music, including elements of Western classical and religious music. The culture of Barbados is a syncretic mix of African and British elements, and the island's music reflects this mix through song types and styles, instrumentation, dances, and aesthetic principles.
Redleg is a term used to refer to poor whites that live or at one time lived on Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada and a few other Caribbean islands. Their forebears were sent from Ireland, Scotland and Continental Europe as indentured servants, forced labourers, or peons.
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal and other places were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugar industry. These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe, later supplanted by European-grown sugar beet.
The Barbados National Trust, founded in 1960, is an organisation which works to preserve and protect the natural and artistic heritage of Barbados and to increase public awareness of the country's historic and architectural treasures. These include a number of different cemeteries, gardens, historic houses, nature reserves, park areas, windmills and coastal areas.
Six Cross Roads was an old village in the Parish of Saint Philip in Barbados.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to the nation of Barbados.
Combermere School is a school in Barbados, notable as one of the oldest schools in the Caribbean, established in 1695. Its alumni include several leading cricketers, David Thompson, sixth prime minister of Barbados and other politicians, several authors and the singer Rihanna. In its first 75 years, the school "provided the Barbadian community with the vast bulk of its business leaders and civil servants " and it is "perhaps the first school anywhere to offer secondary education to black children".
A Jewish population has been in Barbados almost continually since 1654.
Wallblake House is a heritage plantation house and museum annex in The Valley, Anguilla in the northeastern Caribbean. Built in 1787 by Will Blake, a sugar planter, it is stated to be the oldest structure on the island. Although gutted by the French in the late 1790s, it was rebuilt by the British and today has been fully restored, with its kitchen complex, stables and slave quarters intact. A church in the vicinity contains a stone fascia with open-air side walls and a ceiling, which is the form of a hull of a ship.
Buckra or Backra is a term of West African origin. It is mainly used in the Caribbean and in the Southeast United States. Originally, it was used by slaves to address their white slave master. Later the meaning was broadened to describe white people in general.
St Nicholas Abbey is located in Saint Peter, Barbados, and is a plantation house, museum and rum distillery. Colonel Benjamin Berringer built the house in 1658. This house is one of only three genuine Jacobean mansions in the Western Hemisphere. It's similar to the English Jacobean-era manor houses of the first half of the seventeenth century, the period between the Tudor and Georgian styles, beginning in the reign of James I.
Black Barbadians or African Barbadians are Barbadians of entirely or predominantly African descent.
The Grenada National Museum is a museum in St. George's, Grenada. It is housed in a complex of several buildings, the oldest of which may have served as a French barracks from 1704. Parts of it were used by the adjacent prison until the 1850s, when the land was sold and the Home Hotel was built. It remained a hotel under several owners until closing in the early 1960s. In 1976, the Gairy government donated part of the complex for use as a museum of archaeology and history. Topics on display include Amerindians/Precolonial, the European Invasion, African Slavery, Plantation Economy, the former whaling industry, and colonial-era equipment and artifacts, including several items and a bathtub purportedly used by Josephine Bonaparte.
Sir James Drax was an English planter in the colonies of Barbados and Jamaica. Born in England, Drax travelled to the English colony of Barbados, acquiring ownership of several sugar plantations and a number of enslaved Africans. Drax was expelled from Barbados by Royalists due to being a Parliamentarian, though he returned in 1651 when the island was returned to Parliamentarian control. Drax returned to England where he died in 1662. He would go on to establish a dynasty of wealthy slave owning sugar planters.
Florence Daysh, OBE (1908–1979) was a Barbadian social worker and politician. In 1954, she was appointed to the Legislative Council of Barbados and then in 1958, she was elected to serve in the West Indies Federation, one of only two women. In addition to her social welfare activities, Daysh actively worked to improve women's rights and served as the president of the Caribbean Women's Association in the 1960s. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1957.
Keith Albert Sandiford is a Barbadian-born historian. He has taught literature at Louisiana State University since 1986.
The architecture of Barbados is a reflection of the country's cultural and political history. Originating from the seventeenth-century, the buildings located in Barbados can be seen as being heavily influenced by British colonial and West African architecture.
Coordinates: 13°8′39.49″N59°33′55.77″W / 13.1443028°N 59.5654917°W
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