FONTABELLE

Fontabelle, near Sherwood Content in Trelawny Jamaica originally belonged to William Rhodes James (1755-1795). By 1840, ownership had passed to Andrew Colville and the estate consisted of 1863 acres.

It now belongs to "Teacher" Foster of Duanvale. The Great House, which was more-or-less complete in the 1980's, has "collapsed". I heard that it was pushed down because a "river maid", who lived under the house, had been leading young men astray. On the other hand, I have also been told that, "No, the river maid is actually at Coffee Hall", on the other side of the main road.

Whatever is the reality, this house had a quite sophisticated canal system bringing water to pass underneath the house, so that you drew water upstream and did washing and toilet downstream of the house. Parts of the canal bringing water from Lagoon can still be seen, as can the ground floor stone walls and the walls of the boiling house/factory

lagoon photo

There is a gravestone opposite the house where a Trelawny Gibbs is buried. A nice name, but I don't have any background on it. Presumably he owned the property in the 1960's before it was sold (like Windsor, Carey Park and others) to Kaiser Bauxite for resettling persons displaced by mining activities

grave at fontabelle

A point which may interest is that a sailing ship of 343t, the (Fontabelle was wrecked on the Salt Marsh Bay reef on 10th December 1880.


     

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