the stories of our proud and friendly people, our charming and colourful villages, our fascinating ruins, our intriguing rain forests,
and our traditions that span centuries.
Joseph Nathaniel France Joseph Nathaniel France was born on the 16th September 1907 to Thomas and Mary France at Mt. Lily, Nevis. Thomas who was a road driver and a small plot-holder sent his son regularly to Combermere School. At age thirteen, young France went to St. Kitts to spend his school holidays with relatives in New Town. But before the vacation was over he was offered a job as office boy with the St. Kitts-Nevis Universal...
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Kathleen Manchester Kathleen Dorothy, the only daughter of Thomas Manchester and his wife Ada Killikelly was born in Sandy Point on the 4th December 1923. Kathleen’s memory of those years are idyllic, picnics with her parents, hiding in the garden. They were marred by the memories of the Hurricane of 1928 which tore the roof of the family house. That same year Ada died and the little girl passed into the hands of four aunts. With...
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Edgar Samuel Bridgewater Edgar Samuel Bridgewater was born at Westbury, Nevis on 3rd October 1900. He was one of eight children born to George Bridgewater and his wife Amanda. As the father was a policeman, the family moved around a great deal. Edgar first emigrated with the family to Antigua, where he attended the Buxton Grove Primary School. At twelve years of age, young Edgar was taught by his father to play the organ. He came...
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Fort Street 2008 Basseterre was the main town of the French quarters of the island. Just as Thomas Warner set up wooden forts in Old Road, Pierre Belain D’Esnambuc set up a Fort Pierre in Basseterre. When Governor Phillippe De Longvillier De Poincy took over the administration of the French Caribbean Islands, he wanted something stronger and more permanent. It is known that De Poincy took military architecture seriously. He had books on the subject. The...
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ST. BARNABAS ANGLICAN CHAPEL is a small place of worship on Malone Avenue. Shortly after Governor Philippe Lonvillier De Poincy arrived in St. Kitts in 1639, he donated the service of fifty enslaved workers for the construction of a very fair Hospital, in a very healthy place, where such sick persons as are unable to effect their recovery at their own houses, are attended, and maintained, and visited by Physitians and Surgeons, till they are restored...
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Warner Park is bordered by Losack Road on its south side, Victoria Road in the west, the Basseterre High School on the northern side and Park Range to the east. Originally it was part of an estate owned by the Losack family, a French family that continued to live in St. Kitts after the British gained control of the whole island. In 1817, the Original List of Slaves records a return of seventy-one slaves made...
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Treaty of Basseterre Historical BackgroundThe idea of unification within the Caribbean region gained the interest of the British Colonial Office in the late nineteenth Century mostly as a colonial administrative device designed to cut the cost of managing the colonies with failing economies and a growing reliance on Britain. The 20th century however saw a growing discontent with regards to the unrepresentative nature of the island governments. In 1914, T. Albert Marryshow of Grenada, founded the Representative...
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Arts Festival - String Band, St. Kitts On the 18th August 1964, the Education Centre, now the Basseterre High School, was the venue of “an evening of One Act Plays”. The plays were The Doctor in spite of Himself, by Moliere produced by Eustace John and Sunday Costs twenty-five dollars produced by Aimee Dinzey. This was the beginning of the first Arts Festival in St. Kitts that was to last for 15 days. The idea of an...
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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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