Some Early Buildings of Barbados

1. In 1938, the late R. M. Riefstahl visited Barbados, where he recognized the historic importance of the early buildings. He secured a number of photographs and plans, and had a manuscript regarding them in an advanced state of preparation at the time of his death. This material was kindly placed by Mrs. Riefstahl at the disposition of the writer, who had made an independent study of the Barbados buildings, and it has served him, in addition to his own notes and photographs, in the preparation of the following paper.

Abstract

In that chain of fabulous and beautiful islands, extending for a thousand miles from Trinidad to Santo Domingo, none is more tractable or fertile than Barbados. This character owes something to the coral formation of the island, which is in contrast to the volcanic origin of the other islands, and to a more easterly position in the open Atlantic. The island is tractable because the interior is rolling open country; and it is fertile because the rich soil has been carefully tended for over three hundred years. Thus in spite of its small size, fourteen miles broad and twenty-one miles long, it became one of the most valued of the seventeenth-century British colonies.