St Lucy is in the far north of Barbados. It forms a peninsula surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, east and west. The population of St Lucy in 2010 was 9,758, which equates to 700 people per square mile. In short, it is quiet and isolated.
It is possible to get a Government Transport Bus to the parish but they are infrequent so it’s easier to jump on a mini bus in Bridgetown then change to a smaller ZR at Speightstown for the onward journey to St Lucy. Well that’s what I did anyway.
The journey to Speightstown is unspectacular. Once you leave the outskirts of built up Bridgetown the bus skirts the coast with occasional views of small but pretty sandy beaches. Going through St James the home of most of the island’s 5-star hotels you pass designer shops such as Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Bulgari and Cartier. Then through Holetown into unspoilt Speightstown which to me is much more typical of Barbados than St James is. Although it could be argued that Speightstown is more typical of a Cornish fishing village than a West Indian town.
The ZR then took me from Speightstown into St Lucy. The long straight roads of the ABC Highway take you through unspoilt, almost English looking, countryside allowing the driver to reach death defying speeds and new levels of recklessness.
I was on the Crab Hill bus and asked to be deposited at St Lucy Parish Church.
St Lucy has lots of strange sounding places – Cuckold Point, Graveyard, Moontown and Duppies (Bajan for ghost) are just a few. But my personal favourite will always be Pie Corner. The Government Transport Bus goes to Pie Corner but all the tourist information seems to suggest that if you are at Pie Corner you might like to go to somewhere more interesting.
St Lucy is the only parish named after a female Saint – Saint Lucy of Syracuse. It has beautiful bays and a rugged coastline. There are no large communities in St Lucy and it does appear undeveloped but beautiful.
It is the birthplace of Barbados’ first Prime Minister, Errol Barrow, as well as one of the West Indies most famous and fearsome fast bowlers Charlie Griffith.
Errol Barrow was born into a family of political activists on 21 January 1920. He served in the RAF during World War II, flying 45 bombing operations over Europe. After the War, he studied Law at the Inns of Court in London and took an economics degree at the London School of Economics at the same time.
On his return to Barbados, he was elected to the Barbados Parliament as a member of the Barbados Labour Party. Impatient for change he founded the Democratic Labour Party in 1955 becoming its leader in 1958. He became Premier of Barbados from 1961 until 1966 when, after leading Barbados to independence, he became the country’s first ever Prime Minister, a role he retained for 10 more years.
The singer Nina Simone loved Barbados and spent much time on the island in the 1960s and 70s when she was effectively ostracised by the United States and to avoid the racism she suffered in her home land. She also had a long relationship with Errol Barrow who was married at the time. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that she could have begun creating the song Young Gifted and Black while in Barbados but we do know that Aretha Franklin visited Nina personally in Barbados in 1971 to ask permission to cover the song. Aretha went on to release the album Young Gifted and Black in January 1972 wining a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B performance in the process.
But Barrow’s most memorable achievements were to spearhead industrial development, reduce dependency on the sugar trade, increase tourism, introduce National Health Insurance and Welfare and provide free education to all. No wonder he is remembered as a legendary leader and his birthday is now a national holiday in Barbados.
After 10 years in opposition, the Democratic Labour Party was re-elected in 1986. Robust as ever Barrow described the United States President Ronald Regan as “that cowboy in the White House” and “a zombie; he’s programmed, a very dangerous person.” One can only imagine what he would have made of President Donald Trump. Barrow died in office in 1987.
I got to St Lucy unscathed and with the usual unfailing politeness the bus driver stopped as I had requested at St Lucy Parish Church not driving away until I had alighted safely. Here is what the church looks like:
It really is in the middle of nowhere and like several of the other churches I visited was undergoing significant repair work. I set off to look for Fitz Griffith who is buried in a War Grave somewhere in St Lucy Churchyard. The ground was very rough, stony and difficult to walk on. How the grave diggers manage to get through it I do not know.
St Lucy Church is one of the oldest on the island. The first church, made of wood in 1627, was destroyed by the hurricane of 1629. The second church, completed in 1741 was made of sawn stone but that didn’t prevent it being severely damaged in the 1780 hurricane. The third church was totally obliterated by the 1831 hurricane. The fourth and current church was completed in 1837 and holds a congregation of up to 750.
Among the tablets in the churchyard is one to Dr. Philip Lovell Philips, who erected the Chancel at his own expense. You may remember Philip Philips as the man who funded the building of the Church of St Philip the Less in St Peter. He was clearly a very devout man despite being the owner of several slaves prior to emancipation in the 1830s. It is hard to imagine now how people like Dr Philips reconciled their Christian beliefs with slavery.
An old man with a stick was standing outside the Church and beckoned me over. I said hello and explained I was looking for a War Grave for a man called Fitz Griffith. The old man was clearly deaf and on closer inspection had a definite lack of teeth which together with my accent and his broad Bajan brogue made audible communication impossible. I should explain that his stick wasn’t a walking stick, or a cane, or bamboo. It was just a long thin piece of wood. Probably the perfect definition of a stick. I tried to make polite conversation but it was hopeless. I made an excuse and left him and his stick.
Griffith is a very common name indeed in St Lucy as is Hinds. Many of the sugar plantations were owned or managed by people with those surnames and slaves tended to adopt the name of their ‘owner’.
It seemed like every other grave was a Griffith or a Hinds but none bore Fitz’s name. War Graves are quite distinctive but sometimes it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. So, it is difficult enough to find a War Grave at the best of times.
After quite a while in the belting heat I found myself on the very edge of the cemetery. I could see a gravestone which was in the distinctive shape of a Commonwealth War Grave but it bore no name. I squeezed my way through to look at the other side of the stone and found that it was in fact Fitz Griffith but he was facing away from the cemetery. I can’t imagine that when he was buried in 1919 he was placed looking out of the cemetery directly into a bush but it seems equally bizarre that someone would plant a bush in front of a War hero’s gravestone. It would be like building a house with a window facing directly onto a wall.
Either way his treatment should be looked into by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and their Canadian Agency who are responsible for War Graves in Barbados. This is no way to treat a War hero.
Little is known of Fitz Griffith. To begin with, it is unlikely Fitz was his full name which makes tracing him even more difficult. We know he was a Private in the British West Indies Regiment and that he sailed from Barbados with the 3rd and final contingent of volunteers on His Majesty’s Troopship Magdalena on 3 December 1917. His service number was 15048. He would have landed in England just before Christmas 1917 and the weather must, particularly to people coming from the West Indies, have felt freezing. He was returned to Barbados as medically unfit on 28 April 1919 and died 7 months later on 24 November. Mercifully we can hope he died at home surrounded by friend and relatives rather than alone on a battlefield in a strange and alien continent.
He would have been entitled to a Victory Medal and a British War Medal but we don’t know if he lived long enough to collect them.
Mission accomplished, I looked for the nearest bus stop. The church is just off a very large roundabout named after Sir Theodore Brancker, a Bajan politician who represented St Lucy in the Barbados Parliament from 1937-1976. Sir Theodore was also a lawyer and he fought for black rights, particularly suffrage. He was hugely popular with the people of St Lucy and died on April 25 1996.
Being on a roundabout meant there was a variety of roads to choose from. I had no idea which was the correct exit but headed for the one that had a covered bus stop. Inside it was the man with the stick! By now I was getting more fluent in toothless Bajan. He informed me that two buses had passed. One on this side of the road and one on the other. I was going to ask why he hadn’t got on either one when I heard shouting from the top of the road. It was the ZR that had dropped me off earlier. The driver had got to his destination of Crab Hill and was now on his way back to Speightstown. First, he explained, he had to pick someone up.
So, we headed away from Speightstown to the village of Trents where a young lady and her immediate family ran out to board the bus. The young girl was obviously the driver’s girlfriend. We turned around and headed for Speightstown. They cuddled and she regularly punched him hard on the arm as he drove one-handed at breakneck speed back to Speightstown. Very romantic.
A successful day in many ways but there remained a sense of sadness that Fitz’s grave was obscured and untended. Clearly, he had been forgotten by his family and those whose job it should be to maintain his resting place. Hopefully the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will soon act and perhaps even reverse the headstone so it faces the beautiful church of St Lucy rather than an unkempt bush?