Driving up the west coast, from Bridge-town to Speightstown, you soon see why people around here call this the Platinum Coast. It’s not just the colour of the coral sand — it’s the colour of the foreign money. These seafront lots sell for millions, prices few Bajans can afford. Yet once you head inland you encounter another country, a land of chattel houses and plantation houses — remnants of the twin trades that shaped this island, slaves and sugar.
Built on borrowed land, the first chattel houses were purely practical: basic wooden bungalows, easy to dismantle and put up elsewhere. Palatial plantation houses aped their British antecedents — Georgian and Jacobean mansions, impractically relocated. Fittingly, the chattel houses have endured, while many of the plantation houses are hollow ruins. But not all of them. Some of these colonial relics have been lovingly preserved. Recently I went to two of them, and saw another side of Barbados, a world away from the beach bars along the western shore.
First I went to Colleton House, a robust pile on a steep promontory high above the clear blue ocean.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in