West Indian Properties
Peregrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow owned at least three estates in the West Indies. We describe these properties, but must acknowledge their grim history.
Banner image: La Sagesse Bay, Grenada. The house is lower left.
Roaring River Great House
Originally, an estate of more than 3,000 acres (Grantham Journal 4 August 1978) in St Ann's Bay, Jamaica. This is the 19,000 square foot property where the Cust family were photographed at in 1953. The album is on exhibition in Belton's Library. The National Library of Jamaica describes the house as notable for its upper and lower floor verandas. It commands extensive views of land and sea. As of 2015 it was owned by the Jamaican government. It is reported as slowly being retaken by nature. The exterior of the building itself is still in good conditions, but is no longer maintained. Land around it has almost been full taken over by the natural environment (Thomas 2020, local guide).
The Little River flows through the grounds of the house. The Roaring River is slightly further east, The two rivers join to become the Roaring River and caves at its outlet into the sea immediately west of Pearly beach. This estate should not be confused with the Roaring River estate, Westmoreland in the south west of the island, owned by the Beckford family. Unknown is the age of the house, but a similar sized footprint is seen on the site in James Robertson's map of Jamaica, published 1804.
Enslavement connections
The Roaring River Great House and plantation, St Ann was once owned by Scotsman, Robert Cunningham-Graham (1735-97). He was associated with the estates Roaring River (as mortgagee-in-possession from 1780) and Lucky Hill. Other owners, slave numbers and estate information are provided by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.
The Roaring River estate was a slave plantation that produced sugar, rum, molasses and pimento (note the pimento stores by the pool in the Brownlow photo album). The produce was shipped to Greenock to be sold and the ships would return to Jamaica loaded with fresh supplies for the estate. It is not known how many slaves Robert Graham owned but it is clear that he was involved with the trading of slaves within the colonies and regularly purchased new slaves to replace ones that had been worked to death at Roaring River (Dalglish 2016).
Mullen & Newman 2018 describe Graham's abuse and rape of enslaved people at his Lucky Hill Plantation 20 miles from Roaring River. In 1784 Graham recorded that his enslaved human ‘stock’ at Lucky Hill was valued at £3,604: their value would have been higher, he noted, but for the fact that £886 worth of these people were ‘dead since the original valuation.’
Compensation of £4,086 11s 5d (£400,255 today) was awarded in 1835 for 221 Enslaved. This claim, 331 was subject to litigation between the parties.
Roaring River images in the 21st century including a security guard and his dog (McLaren 2015). The black and white photo is from c. 1953. The latter is captioned by Perry Brownlow with The indoor tunnel passage (home mile!) at R.R. At the far end hangs An Unknown Lady in Lost Profile now in the Windsor Bedroom. The marble-style floor must have made the Brownlows feel at home. Other paintings identifiable at Roaring River include in a bedroom, Kitty as a Young Girl and in the Drawing Room, the 1st Baron Brownlow.
The swimming pool the Brownlows constructed is seen below left in 2012 (National Library of Jamaica, Born-Digital Collection). Satellite imagery for 2022, below right, shows the pool, circled. It has completely been reclaimed by the rain forest.
In the 1962 Dr No, James Bond meets the Acting Governor and Colonial Secretary at King's House, Kingston, Jamaica (above). But permission to film inside was refused. Instead the interiors were allegedly filmed at Roaring River. The Colony of Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom on 6 August 1962.
Another 'Brownlow' property used in the James Bond 1983 film Never Say Never Again was Shrublands Hall, Suffolk. The marital home of Anne Cust, Lady Middleton, the elder sister to the 1st Earl Brownlow.
Perry Brownlow married for a second time in 1954 to a longstanding paramour Dorothy Carlotta Beatty. She died at his Eaton Square flat in 1966 after returning from Jamaica for an operation. Perry had her cremated and brought her ashes back to Roaring River. He scattered the ashes in the sea off St Ann's bay (Grantham Journal 20 May 1966). A fact confirmed on her memorial in St Peter's & St Paul's church, right.
Sussex Estate Great House
This 900 square foot property at 850 feet above St Ann's Bay, Jamaica, 6 miles from Roaring River is recorded as formerly owned by the 6th Baron Brownlow. The house first appears in the slave register in 1789 on a pimento estate active until the 1970s. It is seen on James Robertson's map of Jamaica.
A YouTube video provides the sales particulars. The estate agents shows a cabinet full of Edward VIII memorabilia collected perhaps because the the Brownlow association with Edward VIII.
The agents comment that Lord Brownlow owned the property for 12 years from the 1950s. Noel Coward and Ian Fleming are reported guests. Fleming's house at Oracabessa Bay was 20 miles away. Paul Methuen of Montero Bay modelled the interior.
The plantation was owned by Jasper Gruber in the early 20th century, the son of Charles Gruber, who received 1st Feb 1836 for 33 Enslaved the sum of £62 4s 6d (£6,170 today).
More information about the Brownlows in Jamaica can be found in the Kingston Gleaner.
Grenada remained French until 1762, when it capitulated to the British. It was formally ceded to Britain in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris. In 1779 it was recaptured by the French, but it was restored to Britain in 1783. The French name of the bay was Ance du Petit Marquis.
La Sagesse
Situated on the La Sagesse Bay, Grenada, this property is now a hotel La Sagesse, restaurant and beach bar. Lord Brownlow acquired it in the 1960s, the extract below is from the hotel web site.
He [Brownlow] installed gates around the estate, effectively cutting off the surrounding community from the beach and recreation fields. In 1975 while Lord Brownlow was off the island, the newly emerging Jewel Movement led a group of protestors to the gates of La Sagesse where they tried and convicted him for crimes against the people. The gates were broken down and the property was taken over by the community. When the revolution took hold of Grenada in 1979, the manor house and the surrounding areas were then turned into a military base. After the U.S. led intervention in 1983, the manor house was left in total disrepair and the property overgrown with bush.
In 1987, Mike Meranski and his family came across Lord Brownlow's broken down manor house at beautiful La Sagesse beach. The hotel started out with just two rooms in the manor house and now La Sagesse has grown to 12 rooms, a beautiful restaurant and bar, and the ultimate tropical hideaway.
La Sagesse
La Sagesse
The People’s Trial of Lord Brownlow held under an almond tree at La Sagesse Estate in 1973 with Maurice Bishop representing the people (image from Operation Urgent Memory).
The New Jewel Movement
Under the leadership of Maurice Bishop, this was the main opposition party in Grenada during the 1970s. In 1979, the movement overthrew the government of Eric Gairy, which had ruled the country since independence in 1974. Lord Brownlow, who had purchased the land through Gairy's help, had cut off access to the only beach in the parish of St David's using Gairy's police to enforce the closure. Eight hundred people came to demonstrate against this arrogance.
Brownlow was caught up in this Marxist-Leninist revolution. He underwent trial in absentia and was convicted as the expatriate Englishman who had prohibited public access to the beach of La Sagesse estate. This was a key moment in consolidating popular support for the New Jewel Movement. There is no evidence of the slave colony on that site, La Sagesse Estate, ever being owned by the Brownlows. However, the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery have the estate in the hands of lawyers with no proprietors named.
La Sagesse has an intrigued history dated far back, as the 16th century. In 1650 the British first settled in La Sagesse. Brownlow wanted exclusive control of La Sagesse beach.
The people, their action spoke louder than words. They came out in their numbers from all over Grenada and vehemently demonstrated their displeasure against Lord Brownlow’s pompous behaviour. Lord Brownlow wanted to restrict access to our beach. How dare he attempted doing something like this? It must be made abundantly clear that absolutely no beach in Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique is and shall never be private. The gate Brownlow erected was disintegrated, completely smashed down to the ground and the beach he commanded was truly liberated, by we the people.
The Brownlows, connoisseurs of art, bought paintings in the West Indies. Perhaps the most well known is a painting by Richmond Barthé, Seated Man in a Landscape. This featured in Black History Month in October 2022; a video about it is here.
Below is the 6th Baron Brownlow holding a puppy with his West Indian cook, Edna [surname possibly Sumner, Grantham Journal 4 August 1978]. His third wife, Leila Joan Reynolds, is out of scene, and so the photograph must date between 1969 to 1978.
