Camperdown Great House, St. Andrew, Jamaica

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Camperdown Great House, St. Andrew, Jamaica.

 

Later became The Doric Hotel in the 1920s and finally The Queen's School in 1954.

 

Unknown Photographer, c. 1920. Private Collection.

 

The Doric Hotel (formerly Camperdown Great House), St. Andrew, Jamaica.

 

In 1840 Camperdown Pen was owned by John M. Smith and the Great House stood in the middle of a 120 acre country estate, surrounded by pastures and parkland. Later owners included the Archambeau, Desnoes and Lemercier-Duquesnay families and for one year, in 1886, it housed the Jamaica Teacher's Training College.

 

The original Great House, built in the Late 18th or Early 19th Century was damaged by the Great Earthquake of 1907 and restored in 1908. It then became the home of the Farquharson family, who later sold it in the early 1920s when it was converted into the Doric Hotel, one of several small and fashionable hotels in suburban St. Andrew. In 1954 the old Doric Hotel was finally sold to the Anglican Church and it became the Queen's School, a private Girl's School named in honour of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, whose coronation had been the previous year. The Queen's School still exists but unfortunately the old Great House was destroyed by a fire in 1968.

 

From a Photograph by an Unknown Photographer, c. 1937. Private Collection.