Regent | |
---|---|
Coordinates: 8°26′3″N13°13′23″W / 8.43417°N 13.22306°W | |
Country | Sierra Leone |
Region | Western Area |
District | Western Area Rural District |
Government | |
• Type | Town Council |
• Town Head | Reverend Elinorah Jokomi Metzger [1] |
Time zone | UTC-5 (GMT) |
Regent is a mountainous town in the Western Area Rural District of Sierra Leone. Regent lies approximately six miles east of Freetown, and close to the village of Gloucester.
The population of Regent is approximately 22,000 people and the community is religiously very diverse.
Regent is the hometown of Sierra Leonean economist and politician, Solomon Athanasius James Pratt. [2]
Regent was founded in 1812 to provide accommodation for Liberated Africans, who had been brought to Freetown by the British Royal Navy West Africa Squadron. [3] : 122 The descendants of these liberated Africans, (along with the Jamaican Maroons and Nova Scotians) are the Creole people. Originally called Hogbrook, [4] Regent was named in honour of the George IV of the United Kingdom, at the time Prince Regent of England.
The St Charles’ Church was built in 1816 as part of the Parish Plan. [4] This stone church was financed by the colonial government, and from 1817 the Church Missionary Society paid for a minister, a position taken up by Rev. William A. B. Johnson, nicknamed the “Apostle of Regent”. [4] He was so successful in his evangelism that soon his congregation exceeded the 500 person capacity of the church, and a gallery was added so that another 200 worshippers could be catered for. [4] However after Johnson's death in 1823, the size of the congregation became much smaller. [4]
On the morning of August 14, 2017, a large landslide killed at least 500 people after a night of heavy rains, with the death toll expected to rise. [5] The flooding occurred in the Regent Hill area of Mount Sugar Loaf, killing an estimated 500 people (some died by the landslide immediately in the middle of the night), but hundreds of others are still missing. [6] The suburb is at the brink of the Atlantic Ocean; thus, bodies floated in the shallows and drifted north towards neighboring Conakry, Guinea. [7]
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It shares its southeastern border with Liberia, and the northern half of the nation is surrounded by Guinea. Covering a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi), Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with diverse environments ranging from savanna to rainforests. The country has a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. Freetown is the capital and largest city. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are subdivided into 16 districts.
Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and political centre, as it is the seat of the Government of Sierra Leone. The population of Freetown was 1,055,964 at the 2015 census.
Julius Maada Wonie Bio is a Sierra Leonean politician, and the current president of Sierra Leone since 4 April 2018. He is a retired brigadier in the Sierra Leone Army and was the military head of state of Sierra Leone from 16 January 1996 to 29 March 1996, in a military junta government known as the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).
Ernest Bai Koroma is a Sierra Leonean politician who served as the fourth President of Sierra Leone from 17 September 2007 to 4 April 2018.
The liberated Africans of Sierra Leone, also known as recaptives, were Africans who had been illegally enslaved onboard slave ships and rescued by anti-slavery patrols from the West Africa Squadron of the Royal Navy. After the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished Britain's involvement in the slave trade, the Admiralty established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the trade in cooperation with other Western powers. All illegally enslaved Africans liberated by the Royal Navy were taken to Freetown, where Admiralty courts legally confirmed their free status. Afterwards, they were consigned to a variety of unfree labor apprenticeships at the hands of the Nova Scotian Settlers and Jamaican Maroons in Sierra Leone. During the 19th century, it has been estimated by historians that roughly 80,000 illegally enslaved Africans were liberated by the Royal Navy.
The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers, were African Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African Americans, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.
Sylvia Olayinka Walmina Oreshola Blyden is a Sierra Leonean journalist, political commentator, newspaper publisher, and former Sierra Leone minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Children Affairs under erstwhile President Ernest Bai-Koroma from 2016 to 2017. She served as Special Executive Assistant to Sierra Leone's former president Ernest Bai Koroma from 2013 to 2015.
Sierra Leone is officially a secular state, although Islam and Christianity are the two main and dominant religions in the country. The constitution of Sierra Leone provides for freedom of religion and the Sierra Leone Government generally protects it. The Sierra Leone Government is constitutionally forbidden from establishing a state religion, though Muslim and Christian prayers are usually held in the country at the beginning of major political occasions, including presidential inauguration.
As of 24 September 2012, a cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone had caused the deaths of 392 people. It was the country's largest outbreak of cholera since first reported in 1970 and the deadliest since the 1994–1995 cholera outbreak. The outbreak has also affected Guinea, which shares a reservoir near the coast. This was the largest cholera outbreak in Africa in 2012.
Gloucester is a mountainous village in the Western Area Rural District of Sierra Leone. Gloucester lies approximately five miles east of Freetown, and close proximity to the towns of Regent and Leicester.
Sierra Leone is home to about sixteen ethnic groups, each with its own language. In Sierra Leone, membership of an ethnic group often overlaps with a shared religious identity.
The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Sierra Leone.
The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.
The Oku people or the Aku Marabout or Aku Mohammedans are an ethnic group in Sierra Leone and the Gambia, primarily the descendants of marabout, liberated Yoruba people who were released from slave ships and resettled in Sierra Leone as Liberated Africans or came as settlers in the mid-19th century.
Charlotte is a mountainous village in the Rural District in the Western Area of Sierra Leone. Charlotte is located about twenty miles outside Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital. Charlotte, is commonly known as Charlotte Village, and is in close proximity to the towns of Regent, and Leicester. The main economic activity in Charlotte is farming.
The Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone was the British colonial administration in Sierra Leone from 1808 to 1961, part of the British Empire from the abolitionism era until the decolonisation era. The Crown colony, which included the area surrounding Freetown, was established in 1808. The protectorate was established in 1896 and included the interior of what is today known as Sierra Leone.
Sugar Loaf is a forested mountain in the Western Area of Sierra Leone in west Africa. The capital city of Freetown is built around its lower slopes. Parts of the mountain are protected as the Western Area Forest Reserve.
On the morning of August 14, 2017, significant mudflow events occurred in and around the capital city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. Following three days of torrential rainfall, mass wasting of mud and debris damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings in the city, killing 1,141 people and leaving more than 3,000 homeless.
This is a list of events in the year 2017 in Sierra Leone.
Throughout 2022, floods affected most of Africa, killing over 2,100 people. The worst affected country was Nigeria, with over 610 deaths.
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