Sligoville (formerly known as Highgate) is a small community approximately 10 miles from
Spanish Town
Spanish Town ( jam, label=Jamaican Creole, Panish Tong) is the capital and the largest town in the parish of St. Catherine in the historic county of Middlesex, Jamaica. It was the Spanish and British capital of Jamaica from 1534 until 1872. Th ...
in the parish of
St. Catherine on the island of
Jamaica.
History
On 10 July 1835, Reverend
James Phillippo, an English Baptist minister and anti-slavery activist stationed in Spanish Town, purchased of land for £100 and established the first "free village" in the West Indies. The land was subsequently divided into quarter-acre lots which the freed slaves could purchase for £3 each.
The first former slave to purchase land in Sligoville was former Hampstead Estate headman Henry Lunan. What became known as the "
Free Village
Free Villages is the term used for Caribbean settlements, particularly in Jamaica, founded in the 1830s and 1840s with land for freedmen independent of the control of plantation owners and other major estates. The concept was initiated by English ...
" system resulted from this first settlement, and similar villages were established throughout the island, most of them by ministers of religion, who supplied land to the ex-slaves who had never owned land before.
Originally named Highgate, the village was renamed as Sligoville (after
Howe Browne,
Marquess of Sligo
Marquess of Sligo is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1800 for John Browne, 3rd Earl of Altamont. The Marquess holds the subsidiary titles of Baron Mount Eagle, of Westport in the County of Mayo (created 10 September 1760), ...
and
Governor of Jamaica
This is a list of viceroys in Jamaica from its initial occupation by Spain in 1509, to its independence from the United Kingdom in 1962. For a list of viceroys after independence, see Governor-General of Jamaica. For context, see History of Jamai ...
in 1834, the year that freedom came to the enslaved people of Jamaica) on 12 June 1840.
[ Phillipo later established a church and school in Sligoville. The ruins of the Highgate House, which was the residence of several British governors, can still be viewed in Sligoville today, along with the private chapel St. John's Anglican Church that John Agustus O'Sullivan founded in 1840 and the Sligoville Great House, also built by O'Sullivan. The Sligoville Heritage Foundation Benevolent Society, founded by direct descendants of Jamaican slaves, co-organises the annual Sligoville Emanci-Fest with the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission.][
Site of Pinnacle, the first Rastafarian village in Jamaica (founded 1940, demolished 1958), see Leonard Howell for details.
]
Notable people
* Shirley Anne Tate
Shirley Anne Tate (born March 1956) is a Jamaican sociologist, scholar, researcher, educator, and author. She is known for her work in studying racism, the Black diaspora and the intersection with feminism; specifically within institutional raci ...
(born March 1956) Jamaican sociologist, scholar, researcher, educator, and author; raised in Sligoville.
References
{{Settlements in Jamaica
Populated places in Jamaica
Populated places established in 1835