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Our People

The Runaway of Mount Misery (1639)

 

Mount Liamuiga (formerly Mount Misery), St. Kitts   In November 1639, more than sixty enslaved Africans from the Capisterre region, angered by the brutal treatment meted out to them by their owners, left their plantations and found refuge on the slopes of Mount Misery. They took with them their women and children and built a formidable camp upon the mountainside. It was protected by a precipice on one side and could only be approached by a narrow...

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Notes from an Interview

 

Eyewitness: Cyril Halbert Date: 28th January 2005 Place: National Archives Cyril Halbert was about twelve years old in January 1935. He was a student at the Grammar school which at the time was run by Mr. Williams, an English man. The teachers were Branch, Wooding and Matheson. There were about forty boys at the school. On the 29th January 1935, all the boys were sent home. They were urged to go home as soon as possible and to...

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Sir Probyn Innis

 

Probyn Ellsworth Inniss was born on the 18th November 1936 at Challengers Village.  he was a student of the St. Kitts Grammar School.  he attended Trinity Government Primary School from 1942 to 1949.  In 1949 he won the St. Kitts Nevis Trades and Labour Union Scholarship to the Grammar School from which he graduated in 1955.  For the following two years he worked in the Treasury and Customs Department then went to study at the...

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Our Places

Government House

 

Government House 2015 The land that became known as Springfield was a small part of Diamond Estate. It 1828 it was the property of Sir James Henry Blake, the second son of Sir Patrick Blake of Langham, an absentee land owner. Besides Diamond, he also owned Pinnel, an estate of one hundred and ninety seven acres in the Parish of St. Ann and had land in Montserrat and the counties of Middlesex, Suffolk and Sussex in...

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Bloody Point

 

Bloody Point is situated to the west of Challengers Village. It gets its name from the Massacre of the Kalinago that took place in the vicinity. English and French settlements had been set up on St. Kitts in 1624 and 1625. From the start, Warner and his men treated the Tegreman and his people as hostiles. When they set up their settlement “near to ye kings (Tegreman’s) house” they did not simply build homes, they also...

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Co-Cathedral Of The Immaculate Conception

 

CO-CATHEDRAL OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION is an ornate church constructed out of grey stone and located on the eastern side of Independence Square. In the early years of the French occupation of St. Kitts, the Jesuits had build a Roman Catholic Church and dedicated it to Our Lady. Notre Dame was burned in 1706 during the Anglo-French war and rebuilt later as St. Georges Anglican Church. The catholic congregation in St. Kitts diminished drastically in...

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Our Events

St. Kitts Music Festival - end of June

 

The St. Kitts Music Festival takes place every year at the end of June. It was the brain child of then Minister of Tourism and Culture, G A Dwyer Astaphan who wanted to create an event that would attract visitors to St. Kitts in the off season and to expose the creative elements on the island, and the general public to the different genres of music. The festival’s website sets out its objectives as follows: to...

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The Fire of Basseterre – 3 July 1867

 

On the night of the 3rd July 1867, one of the worst fires in St. Kitts destroyed the town of Basseterre. It started in an uninhabited house in Reeve Alley just behind the western side of the Pall Mall Square (now Independence Square). That side of the Square was destroyed. The Alley connected the Square and Fort Street and the fire made its way down both sides. The night was a breezy one and the...

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An Account of the Damage to St. George's Church from the Earthquake of 1974

 

An earthquake of magnitude 6.5 on the Richter scale occurred at about 5:55 a.m. on October 8th 1974, and did considerable damage to the St George’s Parish Church. The epicentre of this quake was some 40 miles east of Antigua, and 60 miles below the surface of the earth. The nave of the church consists of two rows of stone columns on either side. The first of these columns was separated from the east dome of...

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"In this  bright future, you can't forget your past"

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