Mountravers Plantation - Nevis, West Indies

Christine Eickelmann and David Small

Other work on Nevis

• Clarke's Estate, St Thomas Lowland:
  In 2000 and 2001, we conducted a search for documentary evidence for Clarke's Estate (now the Four Seasons Hotel and Resort). This plantation bordered Mountravers to the north and was once owned by the radical Alderman Richard Oliver of London and by John Henry Clarke and his family. In 1830 Peter Thomas Huggins of Mountravers purchased the property. Huggins acquired it after its slave population had undergone a particularly difficult period of shortages, illnesses and unrest (The History of Clarke's Estate on Nevis: From Sugar Plantation to Luxury Resort, C Eickelmann, D Small with D Rollinson, unpublished MSS, 2001).
  
  Fieldwalking, conducted in 2002 at the possible site of a ninteenth-century slave village, revealed pottery scatter similar to that found at Mountravers, as well as structures that need further investigation. Another visit to the site in 2004 suggested that a potentially important slave village site was about to be destroyed by developers, without prior recording of the archaeological remains.
• Scarborough's Estate, St Thomas Lowland:
  The Scarborough family owned this plantation to the south of Mountravers, and with 74 slaves (1817) it belonged to the smaller estates on Nevis. Peter Thomas Huggins acquired this property as well (C Eickelmann, 2003).
  
  The site of Scarborough's plantation had been surveyed in 2001 (NHP); David Small identified additional features in 2006.


The ruined windmill tower and boiling house chimney at Bush Hill, St John Figtree
(D Small and C Eickelmann, 2008)


• Bush Hill Estate, St John Figtree:
  Between 2007 and 2011 an archaeological field school was conducted at Bush Hill. With enthusiastic support and generous assistance from the owners, the Hoffman family of Montpelier Plantation Inn, the project investigated perhaps the most important undamaged industrial site on the island. The project is led by Dr Marco Meniketti, Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology at San Jose State University; David Rollinson, sometime Director of the Nevis Fieldstudies Centre; and David Small, Research Associate in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol in the UK. A short history of the estate was researched and written as part of the first phase; see D Small and C Eickelmann Bush Hill Estate, St John Figtree, Nevis: A Preliminary Assessment of the Documentary Evidence (March 2007).


A very fragile volume of late eighteenth-century Nevis court records
(D Small, 2008)
• Endangered Archives Programme:
  Important legal documents relating to the era of slavery are held in the Supreme Court Registry in the Nevis Court House. Among these are the Common Records which are gradually deteriorating due to the conditions in which they are held. With the help of the staff, in 2004 we organised the Common Records again, covered as many as we could, labelled all of them and produced a report on a medium-term strategy for their conservation. In 2008, we conducted a survey of the condition of historic records in the Nevis Supreme Court Registry, other official bodies, the Methodist Church and the Nevis Historic and Conservation Society (NHCS). This was done with generous assistance from the British Library Endangered Archives Programme, the permission of the Supreme Court Registrar and the Nevis Island Administration (NIA). As a result of the survey, recommendations were made to the Court, the NIA and the NHCS - see Publications and reports.
Unfortunately the present Nevis Island Administration does not appear to have taken any action to improve the care of these important and irreplaceable records.

For further information about the survey, please visit the British Library website.

• Tower Hill Estate, St Thomas Lowland:
  In 2007 we investigated the history of Tower Hill Estate and produced a report. Research revealed that this estate was once owned by William Mathew Burt of Maiden Erly, Member of Parliament for Great Marlow and Governor of the Leeward Islands. By the 1790s it had become property of John Taylor of St Kitts and Carsharlton in Surrey. He still owned it in 1817 when 171 slaves lived on the estate (see Publications and reports).

• Montpelier Estate, St John Figtree:
  In 2010 documentary research resulted in the first detailed report on the history of Monteplier Estate. This plantation was established in the 1790s by John Richardson Herbert, President of the Council of Nevis. His niece was Frances (Fanny) Nisbet, and it was at Montpelier that she met and married Captain Horatio Nelson. The plantation became the residential centre of the most powerful collection of estates yet seen in Nevis, although they were later mortgaged to the hilt under Herbert's daughter, the eccentric Martha Williams Hamilton. In the 1820s and 1830s this group of estates had to be broken up under her successor Magnus Morton (Herbert). The report includes an analysis of the enslaved population of Montpelier between 1817 and 1834. The estate was unusual for Nevis in that it had higher proportions of enslaved first generation Africans and mixed race slaves (see Publications and reports).

• Wreck of HMS Solebay:
  Under Captain Charles Holmes Everitt, the Solebay was wrecked off Nevis during the Battle of Frigate Bay on 25 January 1782 and set alight by the crew under fire from two French ships. The officers and crew escaped onto the island without loss. The wreck was located in 2010 on the basis of information provided by Lillian Azevedo, an archaeologist working in Anguilla. The current archaeology is led by Chris Cartellone of Texas A&M University and facilitated by Paul Diamond and Vincent Hubbard of Nevis under the aegis of the Nevis Maritime Archaeology Group. Further documentary research in the UK National Archives by David Small and Brian Littlewood is focussed on a history of the vessel and an analysis of the ship's muster and other crew records. This research has revealed that prior to the battle the 28-gun frigate played a small but important role in the Royal Navy's blockade of the North American coast during the American War of Independence. She took part in the decisive Battle of the Virginia Capes in September 1781 which led to the British surrender at Yorktown. The ship's muster has shown that a significant number of the crew were men pressed into service in Charlestown, South Carolina, where the frigate was the senior naval vessel in the autumn of 1781 before sailing to join Rear-Admiral Hood in the Leeward Islands. See also Museum of Underwater Archaeology