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Okay I got it straight. To get to Torrington Bridge you go South on the way to Cross Roads and once you pass the Bridge you are on Orange Street....something like that.
kingston.jpg
kingston.jpg
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Jamaican politicians would rather chop down ancient historical trees than build roads around them. They have unnecessarily murdered three huge and ancient cotton trees that I can recall in order to built roads. It's the same attitude that they are showing towards the Goat Islands.Originally posted by Tropicana View PostComment
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Thank you for the map. Anything west of Cross Roads and Half Way tree is a blur to me. Even the downtown area around King Street I vaguely remember from childhood having gone there with my parents. By the time I lived in Jamaica again, the whole scene had changed.
It is unfortunate that historical landmarks are being destroyed.
I live in a part of Ontario where they are constantly sprucing up historical sites, adding plaques, banners, etc. In fact, I was looking at some of them yesterday. Some of the buildings have signs letting you know when they were built, who the original inhabitants were and their profession. Yes forests do get chopped down but there are a lot of protests and some are saved.
We should not be so quick to destroy our heritage.
I am wondering if the reason that slackness is being passed off as culture today is that we have not done a proper job of familiarizing new generations with our heritage and the richness of our legacy. Jamaican culture did not begin with Bob Marley. No disrespect to him by that statement.Last edited by Tropicana; 10-04-2013, 09:57 AM.Comment
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It is interesting to compare the old and the new. Apparently Kingston was laid out as a square very organized but today it doesn't feel that way. This was the original plan:
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Plan of Kingston by Jacques Nicolas Bellin, Paris 1764.
In 1692 when a massive earthquake destroyed Port Royal, long the seat of the island's trade and a large residential area, the land across the harbour known as the Liguanea Plain after the giant iguana, began to look more attractive. After witnessing the massive destruction and sinking of Port Royal, the desire to rebuild that town was lukewarm at best.
At the time of the Port Royal earthquake, there were probably only 8 or 9 houses on some 530 acres of the Liguanea Plain * all related to Colonel Samuel Barry's hog pen or hog crawle as it was more commonly known. Sometime in the early 1660s Barry sold the land to William Beeston so that in June of 1692 when a new town was needed to provide homes for former Port Royal residents, Nicholas Lawes, acting on Beeston's behalf, sold 200 of the 530 acres to the Jamaica Council (the island's governing body). The total cost was £1,000.
When Beeston returned to Jamaica as Lt. Governor in 1693 (a post he would hold until 1700), he declared the sale of his lands illegal and repossessed the property, which by that time consisted of some 800 lots, most 150 ft. long and 50 ft. wide. Beeston resold the lots at a large profit, well aware that future profit was in store as he owned the 330 acres surrounding the new town.
Soon after, the Jamaica Council instructed an English surveyor to draw up a plan for this new town on the southeast section of the island. The town, as orig inally drawn by John Goffe and eventually laid out by engineer-general Colonel Christian Lilly, was a chessboard-like parallelogram running one mile in length from north to south (Port Royal Street to North Street) and half a mile wide from east to west (East Street to West Street). These four streets formed Kingston's original boundary and were regularly traversed by other streets and lanes that alternately crossed each other at right angles. In the centre of the parallelogram that was Kingston the main street ran south to north and was known as King Street. It was intersected in its centre by Queen Street and a four-acre square area around that intersection was the site of a military camp known as Parade.1 Like many other English colonial towns, it came to be known as Kingston (possibly from King's Town).
Around Parade, in addition to the military camp, was the Parish Church and later a playhouse, the Theatre Royal. The commercial buildings and the courthouse were found closer to the sea. Wealthier residents favoured the eastern section while poorer residents made do with the west, many living on land owned by the merchants John Hannah and William Rae, which was close to swamps. One of the island's first burial grounds, May Pen Cemetery, lies near this area. Hannah Town would become one of St. Andrew's first residential settlements. Many regarded Kingston as having been well laid-out with wide streets of varying widths. (See map attached.)
Kingston was made a parish in 1713. It had a natural harbour, massive defences in its ring of forts, fertile soil and access to water supply.By the mid-1700s, Kingston had grown from a seaside town with 6 miles of waterfront to a city which was awash in houses, stores and wharves. Clearly the island's commercial capital, it was said to be strange to see less than 200 vessels in the bay before the town at any given time. In 1774 the Chamber of Commerce, one of the first in the New World, was formed. By the end of the 18th century, Kingston's population reached 25,000.
BECOMING A CITYIn the early 1800s, Kingston was regarded as the great port of the Caribbean, just as its predecessor Port Royal had been a century earlier. In 1802, during the reign of George III, Kingston was granted a Charter as a Corporation, winning formal recognition as a city. John Jacques, Commander of the People's Militia, was elected mayor. Michael Scott's popular adventure hero, Tom Cringle, writing about early 19th century Kingston, noted in his log: "everything appeared to be thriving....the hot, sandy streets were crowded with drays conveying goods from the wharves to the stores...the appearance of the town itself was novel and pleasing; the houses, chiefly of two-storeys, looked as if they had been built of cards, most of them being surrounded by piazzas, gaily painted in green and white...the streets unpaved, and more like dry river courses than thoroughfares in a Christian town...." (as cited in Johnson, 1993, p. 69).
Here are some other maps.
vintagemapkingston.jpg
downtownkingston.jpgLast edited by Tropicana; 10-04-2013, 10:21 AM.Comment
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Well Leddih, I finally have Constant Spring and the market indelibly etched in my mind. I won't forget it now. I had not been to Kingston in about 20 years. It has not changed a lot.
Anyway, since you seem to be the only one who knows Kingston, I still need your help with these photos and this question:
Tonx.Comment
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