A Short Explanation of the Origin of Apartment Names.
The present-day visitor to Maresol will notice that each of the fifteen (15) apartments available for rent has a name. Some of the names, for example, Nicholas Abbey and Silver Sands, seem to refer to the local place or house names. But other names, Bowling Alley, for example, would seem to have nothing to do with specific places in Barbados. In the Maresol brochure, each apartment relates to a letter of the alphabet, which corresponds to the name of the apartments. But there are many gaps in the alphabetical sequence. Each letter from A to H is included (G represents "Dover G"), but there is no I, J, K, L, before the sequence picks up again at M (for "Moonshine Hall"). What explains this apparent disorder? What is the origin of the Barbados apartment names? These questions prompted this little historical inquiry. It turns out that every apartment received its name from someplace on the island. Furthermore, the original alphabetical sequence extended unbroken from A through S. When Peter Morgan bought the Maresol Apartments in the 1960s he built I and J as the second story of Apartment H, and built Apartments K and L across the road. Thus, there were once a total of nineteen apartments. Their names are now as follows: 1. Apartment A - Appleby Cove 2. Apartment B - Bowling Alley 3. Apartment C - Culpepper Island 4. Apartment D - Dukes 5. Apartment E - Easy Hall 6. Apartment F - Featherbed Lane 7. Apartment G - G Dover G 8. Apartment H - Hayward's Fort 9. Apartment M - Moonshine Hall 10. Apartment N - Nicholas Abbey 11. Apartment O - Oyster Bay 12. Apartment P - Pico Teneriffe 13. Apartment Q - Quaco Bob 14. Apartment R - Ragged Point 15. Apartment S - Silver Sands Written by Dustin Griffin February 2009.
Continued - A Short Explanation of the Origin of Apartment Names.
-- Apartment A - Appleby Cove Before 2005, "A" was called "Annanias Point," a corruption of Ananias Point, the southernmost point of land on the island. Its location is in Christ Church, the next point to the east of Silver Sands beach (on old maps it is Ananias's Point). After whom is the point named? Ananias (in the Book of Acts) engaged in the fraudulent sale of a piece of land. When Peter told him that he had lied not only to man but to God, Ananias dropped dead. Perhaps the point was once owned by a dishonest man. In January 2005, The owners of Apartment "A" decided to change the name to "Appleby Cove." Appleby is a neighborhood in St. James, just south of Holetown - but it is strictly speaking not on the coast, and in any case, there is no 'cove' at that point. -- Apartment B - Bowling Alley The road after which Bowling Alley was named was once called Devil's Alley and the Bowling Alley Hill. It begins at Buckden Great House, now a ruin, and Cotton Tower (an old signal station) on the northern end of Hackleton's Cliff and leads down toward Highway 3 (Bathsheba Road). -- Apartment C - Culpepper Island The apartment got its name after the Culpeper family, who owned land on Barbados in the 17th century. Culpepper is a small island (75 x 105) rising only 20 feet from the water south of Skeete's Bay, north of Ragged Point, in St, Philip. Culpepers later owned Easy Hall. Over time the name has been changed into "Culpepper Island." -- Dukes - Apartment D Dukes was named after a plantation and 17th-century house in St. Thomas, east of St. James's Church. It was noted on the 1658 Ligon Map and built by the Duke family, last of whom was William Duke (1704-65), Clerk of the House of Assembly, and author of the Memoirs of the First Settlement of the Island of Barbados (1743). In his lifetime, the Dukes returned to England. Their descendants settled in North Carolina, where they established R. J. Reynolds Co. and founded Duke University. -- Apartment E - Easy Hall Easy Hall got its name from an old plantation house on the top of Hackleton's Cliff, in St. Joseph. The "Culpeper" family once owned the plantation, and their name has survived in Culpepper Island. "Living at Easy Hall" is a Barbadian expression meaning something like 'doesn't have a job and is supported by his female relatives.' Compare the old-fashioned American phrase, 'living on Easy Street" - that used to mean 'free from care or constraint.' -- Apartment F - Featherbed Lane Featherbed Lane got its name after a road in St. John's parish, running down to a plantation called Halton (recently a banana ranch). The two sisters living in the area, who owned featherbeds, inspired the naming of this apartment. The sisters distinguished themselves from other people, whose beds would have contained khus-khus, a coarse grass once grown on the borders of fields to prevent soil erosion. The name may also be ironic: the road is now paved but was once unpaved and badly washed out - anything but a 'featherbed.' ...continued below
Continued - A Short Explanation of the Origin of Apartment Names.
-- Apartment G - Dover G "G" is from the original name of the apartment "Gay's Cove," the old name for what is now usually called Cove Bay. In St. Lucy, on the east side of the island near Pico Teneriffe. The cove is named for the Gay family who married into the prominent Alleyne family (led by Sir John Gay Alleyne, after whom Mount Gay also got its name). But when 'gay' acquired its current popular meaning, the owners of the cottage gave it its present name. -- Apartment H - Hayward's Fort The name comes from a corruption of Heywood's Fort (noted on the 1722 map), just north of Speightstown, and south of Port St. Charles. Near present-day Heywoods Beach and Heywoods Golf Course, the fort was one of a chain of forts on the vulnerable west coast that made up the island's defense in the 17th and 18th centuries. Only Maycock's Fort survives today as a ruin. -- Apartment M - Moonshine Hall - Apartment This apartment was named for Moonshine Hall, which was built about 1635 by Thomas Bowyer, a naval captain who had the house built by his moonlighting crew - they reportedly worked by the moonlight. Later owned by Sir Robert Davers and then by the Frere family, one of the largest sugar families on the island. Henry Frere was the author of the 1768 Short History of Barbados. The name may also have another derivation from the word "moonshine." Its modern sense of 'illicit liquor' did not appear until the late 18th century. The word previously meant 'foolish or impractical talk or plans,' as in the expression 'that's just moonshine.' Bowyer's contemporaries may have declared that his project of building a big house was, as we would say, just a pipe-dream. The house and plantation located just off Highway 3, below Market Hill, was purchased by Mrs. Dorothy Williams. She formerly owned an apartment at Maresol. -- Apartment N - Nicholas Abbey The apartment got its name for St. Nicholas Abbey, a plantation house (c. 1650) in St. Lucy, the oldest house on the island. It was never an actual 'abbey.' It was named for St. Nicholas Parish in Bristol, England, home of St. Nicholas Abbey's owners in the early 19th century. -- Apartment O - Oyster Bay It was named for a luxurious rental villa on Lower Carlton Beach on the west coast near Heywoods. -- Apartment P - Pico Teneriffe Pico Teneriffe is a modest pinnacle on the northeast coast of Barbados, 269 feet high, as opposed to the 12,000-foot-tall mountain in the Azores. -- Apartment Q - Quaco Bob It was named for a small, modest 2-bedroom waterside cottage that once stood on the site of the present Cliff Restaurant in St. James, south of Holetown. The name "Quaco" was commonly assigned to male slaves in the West Indies in the 18th century. In the late 18th century, a Barbadian newspaper ad reported a runaway slave named "Quaco." -- Apartment R - Ragged Point Ragged Point is the easternmost location on the island of Barbados, where the East Point lighthouse is today. The rocky and irregular coastline at this point might be called 'ragged.' -- Apartment S - Silver Sands It was named for a beach resort near the South Point lighthouse famous for windsurfing and parasailing. The sand, piled into high dunes by the wind, is not particularly silvery.