“A handsome and extensive Leper Asylum has quite recently been erected.”
So went the effusive praise of an unknown writer from the Barbados Handbook in 1912.
But within eight years, this “handsome and extensive” asylum, with its granite slate roofs and grounds laid out along the lines of the Union Jack, would have seen its last new patient.
For leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, a chronic infection that horribly disfigured the body and caused revulsion among the local population, had disappeared from the island by 1920.
But back in 1846, the disease appeared to be so rampant that an Act of Parliament was passed so that beggars, who showed signs of leprosy, could be removed from the streets and incarcerated in an asylum.
That complex, said eminent historian Morris Greenidge, was actually part of what was known as John Batt’s Estate (or Bat’s according to a 1686 Phillip Lea map of Barbadoes).
“Part of the estate was known as the Barbados Battery and the larger part of it was on the ridge,” said Greenidge. “Around 1863, they were decommissioning some of the forts and the Barbados Battery within three years became the Leper Asylum.”
The extensive Leper Asylum stretched all the way to Batt’s Rock Beach where the dead were buried, discreetly mind you, as the tombs carried only the initials of the dead to save families embarrassment. Today, unsuspecting people walk on the area where those dead were once buried, in what is now a grassy walled area near the lifeguard hut.
And when Pelican Island, where those with contagious diseases were quarantined, was incorporated into the island as part of the construction of the Deep Water Harbour, around 1961, a section of the old Lazaretto was walled off to serve as the Isolation Hospital.
Today, those solidly constructed buildings, which stand on perhaps one of the oldest plantations on the island, are now the home of the National Archives. They are the ones which remain inside the perimeter wall.
But there is a plan for at least one of the buildings which lie outside the perimeter wall on lands belonging to the University of the West Indies (UWI).
The Gothic chapel, along with Block A and the prison cells which are on the compound of the Animal Control Centre, are slated for redevelopment by the university, when money allows.
“The university has an approved master plan for the whole area and the chapel will be affected,” UWI principal Sir Hilary Beckles said.
“In our master plan we are going to be developing a centre for African and Brazilian studies and in that compound there will be a chapel.”
The next move for UWI, said Sir Hilary, was to “engage with the Bishop of Barbados” because “we want to take down that chapel and then use it in the new facility and reintegrate it into the new complex.
“We would like to take down the limestone and use them back on the same site in what we are going to call the Equiano’s Centre.”
He stressed the chapel was no longer functional in its present state and was used as a storage facility.
