fort king george

8/2/2019 Fort King George

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Fort King George

Built in the 1770's, this fort is one of the island's best preserved historical monuments.

• The Fort's prisoner's cells, bell tank, barracks and officer's mess are all located among very well

manicured grounds.

• Approaches to the fort take you past the old Fort's prison cell, now converted to offices and then past

the present Scarborough Hospital Facilities.

• The grounds of the Fort are a it is a popular venue for art displays.

• There is a souvenir shop on the compound.

• Several cannon emplacements still remain as they were in the past - overlooking and guarding

the coastline, Scarborough, Rockley Bay and the harbour.

•The Tobago Museum and art display is located in the Barrack Guard House of this Fort.

Nelson’s Island



Nelson's Island (c.1900)

Photograph Courtesy Adrian Camps-Campins

The Five Islands or quarantine islands are perhaps one of the most important historical sites in Trinidad. They not

only served as an entry point for the most peoples immigrating to Trinidad, but also as a detention centre for several

different groups during the twentieth century.

The largest of the islands, Nelson's (originally Neilson's) Island, is dominated by the Quarantine Station built in 1802,

still in a relatively sound state. The associated outbuildings and deep water landing on the south side, constructed in

the middle of the nineteenth century for the traffic in indentured labour, are in ruin. During the second world war the

island was occupied by the United States Navy, which in the early 1940's built a gun-emplacement on the eastern

side of th island of which part of the structure remains, and a cable causeway to the adjoining Rock island, on which

there were timber structures.

Nelson's Island was used for the reception and processing of indentured labour from India for about 80 years from

1845 to 1921. German and Austrian Jews fleeing the impending Holocaust who intended to settle in Trinidad in the

1930s, were detained as enemy aliens, the men on Nelson's Island, the women and young children on Caledonia.

Two Trinity Cross holders were incarcerated on the island: Uriah Butler in the late 1930s and early 1940's, when

under American occupation, and George Weekes, in 1970.

Although the islands continued to be under the jurisdiction of the Chief Medical Officer into the 1950s, Nelson's Island

passed through the administration of various Ministries including Community Development, National Security, the

Institute of Marine Affairs and into an administrative limbo.

Lenagan Island, the third in size of the six islands, is the site of the isolation hospital, much of which remained in

unstable state as late as 1979. The building on the ridge of the island and all sound transportable materials have

been removed. On the concrete jetty there is a 19th century boiler and autoclave used for sterilization of bed linen

and other accessories. At the western end of the island there was a cremation site where the remains were simply

swept and allowed to fall into the sea below.



The Lion House Chaguanas

Lion House, Chaguanas

Photograph: Courtesy Geoffrey MacLean

The Lion House, is the ancestral home of the Capildeo family and stands majestically on the Chaguanas

Main Road in Chaguanas, a large town half way between Port of Spain and San Fernando. It is the only

building of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. Conceived, designed and constructed by the late Pundit

Capildeo, it remains a symbol and memorial to the indentured Indian immigrants, one hundred and twenty

thousand of whom arrived in Trinidad between 1845 and 1917. It is the story of one indentured

immigrant's success and his bequest to the Nation.

Pundit Capildeo was born in 1873 in his family's village of Mahadevadubey in the district of Somra, county

of Gorakhpur in the state of Uttar Pradash, East Central India. Pundit Capildeo broke the bonds of

indentureship and became a highly respected and successful Pundit, ministering to Trinidad's Hindu

community. Over the years he also became a successful landowner, businessman and cane farmer.

In 1924 he began the construction of the Lion House which he completed in 1926 and named it Anand

Bhavan or the Mansion of Bliss . That same year, he left on one of his many trips to India. Pundit Capildeo

never returned to Trinidad dying during the course of this visit.

Father Anthony de Verteuil in his book, East Indian Immigrants, describes the Lion House as follows: -



"The prototype of the original model on which the edifice was designed, was a city dwelling in the town of

Gorakpur, in the county of the same name, from which Capil had emigrated and in which his family had

lived, for so many generations. Indeed, the architectural style of the building, like his family, went back

centuries.

Its brutally stark pillars forming an arcade in front, plain walls and flat roof, mirror the early Gupta style of the 5

th century A.D. Capil constructed the creation with his own hands. It was his very own and yet to

some extent he may have envisaged it as his cultural gift to Trinidad from his ancient homeland.

Outstanding in its own right, the house has become internationally famous because of its description in

cynical style, by Capil's grandson Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, in his book A House for Mr. Biswas,

in which he transforms the lions into representations of the monkey-god Hanuman, Capildeo becoming

Tulsi and Chaguanas, Arwacas ."

Surendranath Capildeo, Conveyancer and former Member of Parliament, completed the restoration of the

Lion House at his sole expense, so that today the public can visit it and see it as it was in 1926. The LionHouse has been many things to many people in its early history. It was a meeting place for many

travelers from all over Trinidad who were passing through Chaguanas.It was a home for Hindu Pilgrims

and an early community centre for the residents of Chaguanas and surrounding areas.

Ganja was sold at the Lion House and it was consumed there by the public without any discomfort to

anyone.

Arima Dial



Arima Dial

1898

Photograph Courtesy Geoffrey MacLean 2009

Arima, about forty miles east of Port of Spain, is Trinidad's third largest town. It is the centre of Trinidad's original

Amerindian inhabitants, the Caribs. Every August the Carib Santa Rosa Festival is held to honour the Patron Saint

of the New World, Santa Rosa de Lima.

In 1898 Mayor John Francis Wallen presented the people of Arima with a clock purchased in Nice, France, which

was placed in the centre of town at the corner of Broadway and Woodford Street and has since been known as the

Arima Dial. The chimes of the clock were said to give the people of Arima a sense of time, particularly at the start of

a new day. No longer chiming, the Dial is known nowadays more as a landmark than a timepiece.

Churruea’s Observatory



Churucca's Observatory (Fort Chacon), Laventille

Photograph Courtesy Adrian Camps-Campins

Don Cosmo Damien Churruca was a Spanish Officer and well known as a scientific navigator. In 1792 he was

appointed to lead the expedition to fix the longitudinal points in the New World relative to Cadiz, Spain.

He arrived in Trinidad on 21 July 1792 and with the permission of the Spanish Governor Don Jose Maria Chacon,proceeded to establish an observatory at Laventille. The observatory is situated adjacent to the Roman Catholic

Church. A plaque incorrectly identifies the ancient structure as "Fort Chacon".

On 2 January 1793, Churruca made geographical and astronomical history by observing with great precision the

immersion of the third satellite of Jupiter in the disc of the moon and also that of the first satellite. From his



observations he fixed, for the first time, an accurate meridian in the New World. On 28 January 1793 Churruca

dismantled his observatory and sailed to Grenada and then back to Spain.

On 21 October 1793 in Cadiz, Churruca accurately assimilated his observations enabling him to link the New World

with the Old and fix an absolute longitude of the Observatory at Laventille. These were later confirmed by further

observations at Havana, Cuba.

Churruca married Dona Maria Dolores Ruiz de Apodaca, a niece of Don Sebastien de Apodaca, Admiral of the

Spanish fleet which was anchored at Chaguaramas and scuttled, when General Abercrombie invaded Trinidad in

1797.

Observatory Street in Laventille was named for the Churruca Observatory.

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