Greenwich Park, Jamaica

Greenwich Park, Jamaica

Greenwich Park in St. Andrew (not to be confused with Greenwich Park, St. Ann)  was owned by Zachary Bayly (1721-1769) and was the residence from 1760 to 1774 of his nephew Bryan Edwards, historian of the West Indies. Bayly described it in his will (1769) as “a certain piece or parcel of Penn Land called Greenwich Park in the Parish of St. Andrew”, with a “Mansion House thereon Erected and Built”, situated in “view of the Harbours of Kingston and Port Royal”.[1] A list of landowners in St Andrew in 1753 shows “Baily, Zach.” as owner of 463 acres in the parish, consisting of 163 acres of “Pen land level”, plus 300 acres of “mountain land”.[2]

Greenwich Park Pen can be located on a 1755 map of Jamaica as the site named “Baily’s” near Kingston, marked with the symbol for “Gentleman’s Estate”. The only surviving trace of it is the name, Greenwich Park Road, in modern Kingston. The full map is available here.

In 1769 he left instructions in his will that Greenwich Park pen should be offered to the Jamaican legislature “to purchase for the use and residence of a Governor or of the Commander in Chief for the time being of his majesty’s ships of war imployed or kept upon this station”. The offer was presented to the House of Assembly in 1770 by his executor (Bryan Edwards) but was not accepted, and in 1774 another house and pen, west of Greenwich Park according to the local historian Frank Cundall, was acquired for that purpose and named Admiral’s Pen. [3] A contemporary observer noted that

“Many of the principal merchants have delightful pens up the Blue Mountains, or in the savannah, which are extensive; and at the foot of them, a little off the road to Spanish Town, and about two miles to the west of Kingston, is a place called Greenwich, where there is a pen called the admiral’s pen. The house, erected for the use of the commander in chief of his majesty’s ships of war on that station, is very large and commodious, and a handsome object in many points of view. At these pens, or country-houses, and on the land adjoining, they breed plenty of hogs, sheep, goats, and poultry:”[4]

Bayly stipulated in 1769 that if the offer of Greenwich Park to the government was rejected his executor should be free to sell or dispose of it as he thought fit. Edwards evidently decided to retain it for his own or his family’s use or profit, but at least one naval officer apparently preferred it to the official residence: Vice-Admiral Peter Parker commander in chief in Jamaica from 1778 to 1782, is said to have resided at “Greenwich Park Pen, Kingston”.[5] By then or later Edwards must have given or sold it to his younger brother, Zachary Bayly Edwards (1755-1800). Greenwich Park was Zachary’s home address at the time of his marriage in 1783, and was still in his possession at the time of his death.[6]

[1] Will of Zachary Bayly, 22 Sept 1769, N/A PROB 11/968/87.

[2] List of landowners in St. Andrew in 1753, N/A CO 137/28. www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com

[3] Cundall, Historic Jamaica (Institute of Jamaica: London, 1915), 210.

[4] Peter Marsden, An Account of the Island of Jamaica (Newcastle, 1788), 10-11.

[5] W.A. Feurtado, Official and Other Personages of Jamaica from 1655 to 1790 (Kingston, Jamaica, 1896). www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com

[6] Oliver, Caribbeana (1914) 3.37; Will of Zachary Bayly Edwards, 20 March 1801, N/A PROB 11/1355.