Letter from the South Atlantic, 5 November 2014

Tim Butler, whose day job is as Solicitor for the National Trust (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) in Swindon, is currently on sabbatical with the St Helena National Trust.   Please find below his first impressions of island life – and tune in here for future updates!

Molly’s Flat, Cambrian House
Upper Jamestown, St Helena
5 November 2014

Dear all,

I’ve now been on the island a week.  When I’ve got further into my work, I’ll drop you a note about that as well.  But for the moment I thought I’d try to paint a picture of my first impressions of the island.  In doing this I am all too aware that there is a sizeable St Helenian community in Swindon, so you will come across people who know the island far better than I will do in three months’ time, let alone now.  So if anything they say differs from my first impressions they’re right and I’m wrong.  I should also explain that, unfortunately, the internet is very expensive to use, so it’s not easy for me to send photographs because of the need to keep file size down – but there are many good photos of different parts of the island on Google Images if you are interested.

St Helena is in the South Atlantic. It’s around 16 degrees south of the equator, which puts it roughly on a level with the border between Angola and Namibia.  It is not far off being in the middle of the South Atlantic: it is 1,200 miles from Africa and 1,800 miles from South America.  Which is what gave it its strategic significance, and thus why the British, through the East India Company, took such pains to secure it 350 years ago, and have held onto it since.  St Helena Government is in the process of building an airport, but for the moment the only way to get here is by sea – normally a five-day voyage from Cape Town on board the only Royal Mail Ship still running a scheduled service, the RMS St Helena.  That is the way I came in.

I’m writing this sitting on the verandah of the flat I’m staying in. I’m sitting at a little table set between two pairs of French windows leading into my wood-floored sitting rom.  On the far side of one set of doors is a hammock which I haven’t yet braved, though clearly I will have to.  Beyond the hammock is a faded orange life ring from a ship.  The verandah is sheltered from the wind by white-painted corrugated iron roof and walls.  The flat forms half of the ground floor of a planter’s-style (though I’m not sure what, if anything, they planted) villa, called Cambrian House.  The other half is lived in by Jeremy (my boss) and his family. There’s another flat upstairs, where the island’s dentist and his wife live.  From the verandah are half a dozen steps leading down to mature (as estate agents might say) grounds.  The house is in Upper Jamestown, a 15-20 minute walk uphill from the town, either by road or by a dusty dirt path alongside ‘the Run’, the stream which used to bring fresh water into Jamestown from the higher ground on the island.

Behind the house it starts to get pretty steep and rocky.  We are almost the last house in Jamestown.  It is in a steep valley, with one of the bigger roads on the island on the opposite side of the valley.  That valleyside is a mixture of brown (rock, scrub and dead grass) and flax.  There is flax everywhere.  It was imported from New Zealand to form the basis for the hemp industry, but was so prolific that it has completely taken over.  It will grow anywhere, including near-vertical slopes – and has crowded out many of the native (or ‘endemic’ as I have learned to say) plants.  I’ve no idea what the gradient on the valleyside would be if you went straight up it.  From here it looks like it would be at least 45%, possibly more.  The roads don’t, of course: they are a series of gently climbing straight stretches and horrendously acute hairpin bends.  Rockfalls are relatively frequent.  I accompanied Jeremy to a meeting yesterday when we were discussing whether the St Helena National Trust should use its small, skilled, building team to repair a heavy buttressed wall which defends a couple of houses from rockfalls.

As people had told me, the island looks prettier in real life than photos are able to capture.  There is a striking contrast between the dark grey and blue rock cliffs which you see as you approach from the sea, and which form the first mile or so as you travel into the island, and the ‘green heartland’.  On my quick day one familiarisation tour we drove round parts of the interior which in places reminded me of Cornwall or North Wales, a mixture of flat, with animals grazing, and steep hillsides, with the roads dipping down into valleys and up again.

At the week-end Jeremy (with his young son on his back) and I went for a one-hour walk to the Heart-Shaped Waterfall.  The waterfall is the source of the water for The Run.  At the moment the St Helena National Trust owns only two properties on the island.  The Heart Shaped Waterfall, along with some of the land around it, is one of those two.  The rest of the Trust’s work is done on land owned by other people or other organisations.  One of the things I will be looking at with Jeremy is how we can put some of those arrangements onto a firmer footing.  The walk to the waterfall is well-made up, with wooden bridges and walkways, and lots of stepping stones.  It is one of the easiest of the ‘Post Box Walks’ designed for casual walking.  It’s rated 3/10.  They go up to 9/10.  The walks book says you should only attempt walks 5/10 or higher with a knowledgeable guide.  Introductory comments for those more difficult walks include “A demanding walk with steep slopes of loose earth and stones to traverse, some clambering over rocks, and vertiginous drops”.  I’m scheduled to do one of those in a couple of weeks’ time.  That will be in a group with a knowledgeable guide – though he issued a pretty comprehensive disclaimer today when asking if I’d like to join him!  The Post Box Walks were actually set up by the St Helena Nature Conservation Group, but the Trust now has a contract to maintain them – repairing the walkways and clearing the rapidly growing vegetation.  ‘Post Box Walks’, by the way, because each walk has a post-box at the end with a stamp and a visitors’ book in it.

The island’s capital is Jamestown.  To get into the town from the quayside you have to go through a low and narrow archway – through the town walls.  As you emerge on the other side ‘The Castle’, still the base for the main government offices, is through an entrance on your left.  It’s not really a castle, but from the outside it does evoke the sense of an East India Company fort – which the first of the buildings to stand on the site was.  In front of you and slightly to the right is an imposing but (painted as it currently is in slate grey) rather ugly church – St James, reputedly the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere.  And further to the right a stone-built jail from perhaps the late 19th century.  Painted white and blue with ‘H M Prison’ standing out proudly on its front wall.  I’m told it will hold 18 prisoners – which sounds a bit like overkill given the low crime rate on the island.  One of the prisoners works with the Trust during the day, returning to the prison each evening.

But, for me, the most impressive view is the one directly ahead of you: the main street of Jamestown, leading gently uphill.  A wonderful collection of brightly painted mainly Georgian townhouses in varying states of decay or restoration, and used variously as shops, hotels, offices, and houses.  The main hotel (‘The Consulate’) looks as if it’s been shipped in from Cuba or Indonesia.  Very colonial.  Beyond the main street several of the buildings become more like the sort of single storey stone houses you see on cowboy films: a completely flat, rendered front, a door in the middle and a window either side with a flat roof sloping from front to back. These are interspersed with some more modern – perhaps 1950’s – houses.  Set back from the street here and there are a handful of three-storey apartment blocks of similar age, designated for social housing.

Jamestown is the only town as such but there are other clusters of housing around the island which vary from hamlet size to village size, often without a main street, just a web of tracks linking houses dotted around a hillside.  There’s considerable variety in both the age and the character of the houses.  Some are very utilitarian, and have been patched up many times.  Some are recently built, or under construction, and more European in style.  Most houses are somewhere between the two.  There are also a number of old plantation owner’s houses, particularly in the area called St Pauls, of which the Governor’s Residence ‘Plantation House’, is one of the poshest.   It’s also home to Jonathan the 150 year old giant tortoise,

The streets in Jamestown are lined with cars ranging from the elderly, resprayed and battered to the shiny and new – but more of the first than the second.  The number plates are just that: numbers, with the number 1 sported proudly by an old Land Rover.  The exception is government owned vehicles where the number is prefixed by SHG – and the quantity of those plates emphasises how big a part of the island economy government currently is.

When you’re driving round you are expected to wave at everyone you meet.  This takes a little bit of getting used to.  Walking around is much the same.  ‘Good morning’ or ‘hallo’ to pretty much everybody if you cross on the pavement, a wave if they’re leaning out of a window watching what’s going on (as a surprising number of people seem to  be).  And if you’re buying anything in a shop, be ready to explain where you’re living, what work you’re doing, and how long you’re here for.

A number of the shops are, I suspect, ex-pubs.  It is strange to be directed for groceries to The Star, The Queen Mary or the Rose & Crown.  There still are some pubs, but I don’t think I’ll be venturing into them any time soon.  They look slightly Pirates of the Caribbean, with added jukebox.  The Star is owned by Solomons, a company which (I learned from Outposts a wonderful book about the last vestiges of Britain’s empire) traces itself back to Saul Solomon who was put ashore in 1790, gravely ill, from a merchant ship on its way to India; he recovered, decided there was money to be made in St Helena, and persuaded his brothers Benjamin and Joseph to come from England to join him.  He is also reputed to have tried to help Napoleon escape, which I guess would have been an opportunity to make serious money in St Helena.  The shops are a small part of Solomons’ operations on the island which include banking, insurance, agent for the shipping line and, I believe, a lot of outsourced work from government.

At the opposite end of the retail spectrum is the tiny shop just a few yards down from the back gate to my flat.  Down an earth path, past a proper kennel-shaped kennel with a friendly mongrel called Spike chained up in it (he has his name on a plate above the doorway to the kennel), and up some steps onto a verandah.  Turn left for the owner’s sitting room, right for the rest of his house, or straight on for a drop-down counter behind which is a storeroom not quite as big as a Heelis quiet room, which forms the open-nearly-all-hours shop.

My colleagues in the National Trust office have made me very welcome. We are a team of 22, including me, though I think a couple of the team are away at the moment.  Most people are in project-funded posts, but recently successive Directors have had some success in finding new project roles for people as their old ones come to an end.  The main projects at the moment are: creating a Community Forest (trying to re-establish some of the rare endemic trees and plants); recording Bugs on the Brink; and maintaining the Post Box Walks.  There are no big built heritage projects at the moment, and that is one of the things which I am working on with Jeremy, the Director.

Jeremy organised a team building day last Friday, giving the offices a good spring clean and a lick of paint.  I wasn’t able to spend the whole day with them, but I did get to do some 100 year old washing up: rinsing some examples of the crockery which has recently been salvaged from an old wreck in the harbour (the SS Papanui).  Not owned by the St Helena National Trust, but stored by them.  Jeremy and I thought it would be good to show some pieces in a cabinet in the Trust’s reception/shop space, rather than having them all shut away in the basement.

I cannot end this non-pictorial postcard, of course, without mentioning the weather.  Most days since I arrived have been warm but cloudy – and occasionally very windy.  Not humid though: washing dries in an instant (he says domesticatedly).  From what people have said to me, the weather’s been like this for a while.  There was certainly a ripple of excitement today because the middle of the day today was bright sunshine, and there was a sense that maybe this was the beginning of summer.

With very best wishes,

Tim