Planning has never been my forte and it was reasonable to assume that the church of St Philip the Less would be situated in Speightstown which is by far the largest community in St Peter. So, one very sunny (is it ever anything else in Barbados?) Sunday, I set off for Speightstown, probably my favourite place on the whole island.
I walked to the Princess Alice bus station in Bridgetown. It was much quieter on a Sunday but the real bonus was that I found my favourite drink seller. On my last visit in 2016 I bought the most beautiful sorrel juice from her but hadn’t been able to find her since. She explained that she only has a licence to sell her drinks on Sundays and Public Holidays but she did have her sorrel juice and I savoured it as I hopped onto the Orange Bus which would take me to Speightstown.
As this is my first article I should explain the transport arrangements in Barbados. There are three main modes of public transport and all involve almost certain death. Transport Board buses are the crème de la crème. They are less frequent than other types of bus but much larger and are owned by the Government. As the drivers get paid no matter how many passengers they carry they tend to be less accommodating or flexible than the privately-owned buses. Although larger, I guess they’d safely carry around 40-50 people, they aren’t particularly well maintained and suspension doesn’t seem to be a specialism of Barbados garages – combined with pot holed roads this makes for a very bumpy journey.
More frequent are the smaller privately owned mini-buses. They are described as yellow but I think they look more orange. You can’t miss them either way. Then there are the privately-owned route taxis also known as ZRs. These are best described as mini-vans. They will stop for anyone, anywhere and at any time – including when they are already massively overloaded. As no sensible people walk in Barbados (it’s too hot) the minibus drivers in particular, blow their tuneful horns if they see someone walking in the expectation they’ll hop onto the bus.
As competition is ruthless buses stop in the middle of the road to deliberately prevent competitors overtaking them and ‘stealing’ passengers on the road ahead.
I can only suppose the driving test in Barbados assesses the ability to drive as quickly as possible and brake at the latest possible opportunity. That certainly seems to be the preferred method of all bus drivers.
The price for all 3 modes of transport is $2 Bajan (around 90p). It’s that price whether you travel one stop or the length or breadth of the island. So, it is certainly good value and very exhilarating. I imagine you’d pay at least £5 a ride if you wanted to have the same level of danger and excitement at Alton Towers or Chessington.
Anyway, on this particular Sunday I took the Orange (or Yellow) bus. We hurtled up the west coast road, through St James and Holetown, passing the posh and expensive hotels such as Sandy Bay before arriving in Speightstown. One of the reasons I like Speightstown is that it has what claims to be the only pub on the island that serves draft beer. It is unimaginatively (considering it is a fishing town) called the Fisherman’s Pub and it’s great. Normally beer in Barbados comes in small bottles – Banks being the most common and popular. It’s very nice indeed but is gone in a couple of swallows.
Much to my dismay the Fisherman’s Pub hadn’t yet opened. I should add that it wasn’t particularly early but have to admit that it wasn’t yet midday. My excuse was the heat and relief of surviving another bus journey.
I set off to walk to St Peter’s Church. It’s centrally located – quite unusual for Barbados where churches tend to be quite isolated. Being Sunday there was a service just finishing and the grandly dressed congregation was spilling out of the church. Not for the first or last time I felt embarrassed in my shorts and t-shirt. There was no sign of a graveyard though. I asked someone if they knew where I might find St Peter’s graveyard. “About half a mile further south” I was told. Down the aptly named Cemetery Road. I walked, and walked and walked. I thought I’d better check my paperwork and noticed that the church I wanted was actually called St Philip the Less and is in Boscobel in St Peter. I told you I wasn’t much into planning.
Boscobel couldn’t really be further away from Speightstown and still be in the same parish. I would need to cross the width of the island to get to Boscobel and by now the Fisherman’s Pub would be open. I decided to leave Boscobel for another day and went to enjoy my draft beer overlooking the Caribbean Sea.
Hence it was that a few days later I once again left the bus station destined for Speightstown where I would get a ZR to Boscobel. ZRs tend to be much more frequent for short, ‘local’ journeys.
The route to Boscobel was stunningly beautiful and it felt like a journey into the middle of nowhere, so peaceful and tranquil. I thought of young Percy Archer who over 100 years ago would have left Boscobel to travel to Bridgetown in, I would imagine, a horse drawn vehicle. More heart breakingly he would have returned in the Spring of 1918 in a similar mode of transport but with his health broken. In effect he was returning home to die and lasted only a short while back home in Boscobel before succumbing to an illness he contracted in a land far from his home and birthplace.
The church of St Philip the Less is set in the area of Boscobel just above the Atlantic Ocean although the ocean isn’t visible from the church. There are also no houses visible from the church so in Percy’s time the congregation must have struggled up a steep hill from the village to the church at the top of the hill. How hot and clammy they must have got in their Sunday best and temperatures of 30 degrees.
A couple of stops from the church some very grandly dressed people got onto the bus. Yet again I looked rather shamefacedly at my shorts and t-shirt (a different t-shirt I hasten to add, although I concede they could very well have been the same shorts as the previous Sunday in Speightstown).
The church came into view and I stood up ready to alight from the bus. I should explain here that despite the many risks drivers and passengers take each day as they travel on the ZRs, the only area in which health and safety seems to be adhered to is the strict rule that you do not stand up to alight until the bus is stationary and the driver will not set off until all oncoming passengers are safely seated. I admonished myself for this breach of protocol and jumped off the bus only to be followed by the grandly dressed party.
I had chosen to visit the church on the day of a funeral. Bajans do funerals really, really well and this was clearly a big one. There were cars everywhere and dozens – possibly 100 – people dressed in their finest clothes. Once again I looked down at my attire as, I’m certain, did the mourners and the officials who were handing out professionally produced orders of service celebrating the life of the deceased who had clearly been a popular and respected member of the community.
Here I will digress to conjecture over the name of the church. There are two theories as to its origin. What is certain is that the church was funded to the tune of £1,000 by a man called Dr Philip Lovell Phillips. He had it built in memory of his son also called Philip Phillips but with the middle names of Lovell Collyer to avoid any possible confusion. One theory is that the church was called Philip the Less in memory of the younger Philip Phillips. Indeed, this seems to be the favoured option. My major doubt is that young Philip although undoubtedly a fine chap was not a Saint. I’m sure as a plantation owner Philip Phillips senior, was regarded by some as God-like but he did not have the authority to canonise his son.
My favoured theory (for what it is worth) is the one that supposes the church is named after Philip the Deacon as opposed to Philip the Apostle (Philip the Great), hence the name Philip the Less.
What is certain is that pointless death does not distinguish between classes or wealth. Just as poor Percy Archer perished due to complications resulting from bronchitis, Philip junior also died as an indirect result of war. Philip had been a Lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Rifle Brigade and just as Percy had survived the battle only to fall to illness, Philip had died aged only 21 of dysentery on 22 August 1858 in Point De Galle (now Sri Lanka) on his way back from India.
There is no doubt that the church was built to commemorate Philip junior as a tablet in the church says “This chapel was erected by his father as a memorial of Philip Lovell Collyer Philips. Philip junior was described as being “deeply loved and valued by all who knew him as a gentleman and officer and a Christian.”
Philip the elder was born in Barbados on 24 October 1805. He was described as ‘non-resident’ at the time of his son’s death. Certainly he studied at Exeter College, Oxford as a youth and married Mary Ann Hawkes at Camberwell, London on 9 August 1832. He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians and lived in Devon where he died on 2 July 1869. Despite his absence from Barbados he had concerns in Durrant’s, Bridgetown and owned the Lamberts Estate in St Lucy to the north east of Boscobel. He was granted compensation for his slaves when the practice was abolished in the 1830s. Bizarrely, at least in my view, his publication ‘An Essay on Tropical Agriculture. With Some Remarks on Certain Analyses of Barbadian Soils’ written in 1845 is still available on Amazon!
The church was consecrated by the Bishop of Barbados, Thomas Parry, on 23 March 1860.
Enough of this digression. I had a decision to make. Did I embarrass myself by wandering around the churchyard in my shorts and t-shirt while these magnificently dressed mourners congregated waiting for the service to commence? I decided Boscobel was too far to travel to on a regular basis so compromised by starting my search for Percy Archer’s grave as far away as possible from the main church. As luck would have it I found Percy’s resting place quickly. It was well maintained and I stood a moment thinking of how far Boscobel and St Philip the Less felt from the battle fields of France and World War 1 where Percy was stationed and contracted the bronchitis that would eventually claim his life.
We know little of Percy. He must have lived in the Boscobel area and at some stage volunteered to enlist in the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). He was a Private and his service number was 13829. He was assigned to the 10th Battalion, Company B of the BWIR. Percy would have sailed to England and then be taken to Seaford in Sussex for training. We know that the 10th Battalion fought in Italy and France and records show Percy was shipped to Marseille in France. At some stage he contracted bronchitis and was admitted to hospital on 22 April 1918 but discharged back to duty only 4 days later. His illness must have got worse and he returned to Barbados via Cimino (also known as Taranto). We don’t know if Percy saw action in Italy or was simply sent to Taranto en route to Barbados. Taranto was the site of a mutiny by West Indian troops later that year but by then Percy was dead having passed away in his homeland on 26 July 1918. His death is commemorated along with other Bajan troops on the Cenotaph in Bridgetown.
It is always sad and melancholy to think of the young Bajan soldiers who perished in, or as a result of, the War. It is likely that Percy was young and single. It is some consolation to know that he died at home surrounded by his family and friends and no doubt considered something of a hero. He would have qualified for the Victory Medal and British War Medal.
As I left the church I pondered whether to head down a steep road that could only lead to the coast. I imagined a beautiful bay with waves crashing against the rocks. I also, more fancifully perhaps, imagined a pub that sold draft beer. Boscobel seemed such a quiet, sedate area I decided to spend a bit longer there. Then shattering the peace, I heard shouting from further up the road. A ZR bus had seen me as a likely customer or perhaps remembered me as the odd white bloke who travelled around the island looking for churches. I felt it would be rude to ignore them so ran up the road and jumped on the bus.
On my return to the hotel I decided to google Boscobel to see what I’d missed. What I found suggested I might have had a lucky escape.
I should first point out that I have never felt safer anywhere in the world as I do in Barbados no matter how far I am from populated areas or how I stand out as the only white person.
My googling introduced me to the apparently notorious Boscobel Toll Gang – sounds like something out of a Western. The gang had been active for at least 10 years terrorising tourists and outsiders. They would block roads and demand money or steal equipment from frightened tourists in particular. The good news is they seem not to have been active for a while now. Anyway, I can’t imagine they’d ever hold up a ZR and the driver would certainly not stop for non-paying passengers.
I got off at Speightstown and avoided the temptation of The Fisherman’s Pub to head back to Bridgetown and my beach shack where 4 bottles of Banks cost $10 Bajan as opposed to the $8 Bajan or so for a single bottle in the hotel. And I thought of Percy and his short but adventurous life and his resting place in the beautiful setting of St Philip the Less churchyard. I was glad he hasn’t been forgotten.
