{"id":954,"date":"2012-03-07T23:53:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-08T06:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/blog\/?p=954"},"modified":"2012-05-18T12:31:45","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T19:31:45","slug":"st-nicholas-abbey-barbados","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/st-nicholas-abbey-barbados\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Nicholas Abbey, Barbados"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The great house came into view, shabby and overgrown, yet elegant somehow.\u00a0 The outmoded parapets like white waves against the red shingled roof, the azure sky.\u00a0 Hounds bayed; I heard a peacock scream and felt a sweet deep hurt in my breast.\u00a0 A hurt I did not want to let go of.\u00a0 I fully expected to see my father come out of the house with a glass of sangaree in his hand…\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> (from\u00a0 Barbados Bound; book one of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

It is on the Caribbean island of Barbados, on the very sugar plantation where she was born, that Patricia comes face to face with the ugly truth about her father.\u00a0 (As a writer I have written several stories in which fathers don\u2019t measure up.\u00a0 In fact, they fail miserably.\u00a0 Which is funny since my own Dad was all a father could be, and then some.)<\/p>\n

In my mind the estate Patricia longs to inherit is St. Nicholas Abbey, a real Jacobian great house in St. Peter’s Parish.\u00a0 Despite the name, St. Nicholas Abbey was never an abbey at all and had no connections with the church. \u00a0 Built between 1650 and 1660 by Colonel Benjamin Berringer, St. Nicholas is the oldest house in Barbados.\u00a0 For me, it was the inspiration for the birthplace of the fictional Patricia Kelley MacPherson, the illegitimate daughter of the second son of an English baron.\u00a0 The house would have already been a hundred years old when Patricia was born — and if walls could talk, it already had stories to tell.<\/p>\n

The original owner of the plantation, Colonel Berringer, was killed in a duel with his neighbor, Sir John Yeamans, who subsequently married his rival’s\u00a0 widow and left Barbados for South Carolina, where he became the governor.\u00a0 Now, there is another novel for you, filled with all sorts of sordid details, I’msure!\u00a0 The house was named after one of Col. Berringer’s descendants, according to a local historian.\u00a0 Berringer’s son left the estate to his daughter Susanna, who married a man named George Nicholas.\u00a0<\/strong> Apparently no one knows how the “Saint” or “Abbey” came to be attached — and I rather doubt if any of the owners were worthy of canonization.\u00a0\u00a0 (God forbid, it might have been called Susanna’s house!\u00a0 But not much has ever been named after women, except hurricanes and a few boats, fighter planes, and cannons…)<\/p>\n

Bob and I visited Barbados in 2002, as I was researching the novel I called Orion Rising<\/em> but that would be published by Knopf as Star-Crossed<\/em> in 2006.\u00a0 Now out of print with Knopf, the book will soon be reborn as Barbados Bound<\/em>, under the Fireship Press label.\u00a0 It is in press now.<\/p>\n

The thick stone walls provide a respite from the hot, bright Caribbean sun.\u00a0 Inside, was cool, dark and sparely elegant.\u00a0 What I most remember about St. Nicholas Abbey was the heavy presence of ghosts.\u00a0 The ghosts of indentured servants and countless African slaves who worked and died there.\u00a0 We will never know their names or their stories, but we can imagine them.\u00a0 I resurrected one possible ghost; that of Patricia’s half brother Rupert Hatterby — a mulatto who was given his freedom by his white father, but little else.\u00a0 Except the name Hatterby, her father’s surname, which is something Patricia always coveted but as a natural child was never given.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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