Archive | April 17, 2015

Gales Valley Great House

The Challenge of Finding Gales Valley Great House

I had a bit of a struggle finding Gales Valley Great House. The trip to Hamden Great House was easy to find because a working sugar factory is there and they give tours (I will cover the Hamden Estate in a future post). The Hamden estate is adjacent to the Gales Valley Estate but at the time, I didn’t realize it. I headed west out of Wakefield, visited Hamden, backtracked into Wakefield, headed south and realized I must be past the estate according to the map. I then asked directions and a helpful man pointed back to the road to the Hamden sugar mill. I was told to follow the road that leads to the limestone quarry and sure enough, I found it near the top of a hill, surrounded by coconut trees, overlooking the large acreage of the previous estate. I found it abandoned. I was able to draw up a floor plan and it must have been a beautiful house at one time with a terrific view of the surrounding mountains and cane fields.

Description of the House

The split level wooden house is painted green and has a steep corrugated metal “M” type hip roof (two peaked roofs side by side). There is a large verandah facing north and the large slash and louvered windows allow the cool breezes to pass through the house. There are no ceilings, allowing the heat to rise and vents at the top of the interior walls allows great cross ventilation…a house built for the warm temperatures of Jamaica, rather than show. The floors are hardwood as well as the interior walls. As in most great houses of Jamaica, the living space is on the second floor. At some point, someone remodeled the house, adding an inside bathroom. A stairway in the living room leads to the ground floor. A separate kitchen out building is also built into the side of the hill.

History

William Gale originally owned Gales Valley Estate in Trelawny Parish and the York Estate in Saint James Parish both of which equaled 3,147 acres. He also owned Mount Hindmost Estate in Clarendon. The Gales also owned the pens and cattle ranches called St. Jago and Paisley. In 1820, there were 388 slaves at York, 262 at Gale’s Valley, 175 at Mount Hindmost and 40 at each of the two cattle pens. These numbers declined in later years. William was born on 7/15/1728 at Liguanea, St. Andrew’s Parish, to John Gale of Withywood and his wife Elizabeth Morant Gale. On 1/11/1753 at Vere, he married his first cousin, Elizabeth Morant. Elizabeth died on 6/14/1759 at age 31 and was buried at Vere Church. The couple had no children. William was a member of the Assembly for Hanover Parish in 1754-55 and for Saint John Parish in 1755-56.

The Gale and the Morant families came to Jamaica separately in the seventeenth century soon after the island was seized in 1655. Major John Gale (1637-1689) was buried there, as was John Morant who died in 1683. Various marriages linked their families, as they both acquired plantations, large estates, and great wealth. In 1754, John Morant owned 4,631 acres in Clarendon and 3,582 acres in Vere. Five members of the Gale family owned more than 6,000 acres of the island. In 1759, John Morant’s great-grandson Edward (d 1791) moved to England from Jamaica, where the family had built up extensive estates. He bought the Brockenhurst estate in Hampshire England in 1770, and his eldest son John Morant (d 1794) purchased the Manor of Ringwood from Henry 8th Lord Arundell in 1794. The Jamaican estates were handed down to subsequent generations of the family. Edward Gregory Morant (1772-1855) inherited his Uncle William Gale’s estates in Jamaica. Death duties on the death of a later Edward Morant in 1910 forced the family to sell the Ringwood properties in 1916. Many of the Brockenhurst estates were sold in 1951 and 1959.

The house is located west of Wakefield on the boundary of Trelawny and Saint James Parishes. Look for the quarry sign, turn left and it is on the top of the hill to the right of the road.