KINGSTON, Jamaica – October, which is celebrated as Heritage Month, is of special significance to the Wattle and Red Earth (WARE) Collective which has chosen to bring focus on Jamaica’s rich architectural heritage, history, and artistic expression through the further development of its Living Museum of Jamaican Heritage.

WARE director and architect, Peter Francis, notes that this year’s 2nd Biennial Art Auction promises to build on the excitement generated by the first event, and will on Day 2, Sunday, October 15 feature an ‘online auction. This will give art lovers and collectors worldwide the opportunity to participate from the comfort of their homes.

Francis, who is also a lecturer in architectural history, said it is important to celebrate the ingenuity of the ‘Taino’ (indigenous Jamaicans) who, he noted, constructed dwellings using what he described as a Spanish Wall Technique. Francis pointed out that these Spanish Wall dwellings were in Jamaica before the Spanish captured the island in the 15th century.

The term Spanish Wall it is thought, likely comes from the description of structures by the English when they took control of the island from the Spanish in the mid-17th Century,” said Francis. The construction technique emerged out of necessity, he explained, Builders used whatever materials were available to create buildings, using lime, timber and red earth featuring a methodology “which predates the British period of occupation”.

Francis said the Spanish, which brought to the ‘New World’ these techniques using lime and stone, came across the structures first built by the Taino, using posts set in the ground and thatch and other wall-forming methods.

“The adaptations leading to the Spanish Wall structures we encounter today were used by emancipated people out of necessity and improved on later by the use of machined timber and standardized building components,” he explained.

The historian said Spanish Wall was used as a building method all the way through the 19th century and into the 20th century in many areas where modest structures were needed and modest means were constraints and the required material was available.

The advent of cement as a binder, the availability of modern building materials as well as the vulnerability of Spanish Wall to natural hazards, termite infestation, and limitations in size, led to the marginalisation of Spanish Wall as a universal method of building. Further, the stigmatisation of Spanish Wall houses as a humble form of dwelling led to the neglect of many of these structures particularly in the parishes of Trelawny, Manchester.

The Spanish Wall dwelling was mostly limited to one storey buildings but many had multiple rooms. There are instances of two-storey Spanish Wall with certain structural improvements to the lower floor. Water catchment was very important to life but also key for construction, and the water cistern was one of the first structures to be built, usually adjacent to the dwelling.

“The availability of tools led to the upgrading and improvements of these houses to receive high-end fittings like timber floors, operable windows and doors, decorative features inside and out”, Franchis offered.

The Maroon communities in the Cockpit Country, and post-Emancipation settlements in multiple parishes were built using Spanish Wall where these materials were available.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom-trained Francis worked in the rehabilitation of housing in Europe before returning to Jamaica to work with the Urban Development Corporation (UDC). Over the last 40 years, his work has focused on the preservation of traditional structures and the use of traditional architectural elements in new works.

A former lecturer at the University of Technology (UTech) in Kingston, he joined Kingston 10 Architects to help develop approaches to architecture which celebrate traditional materials and methods, and helped to initiate the WARE Collective in 2018 through which he continues to work to research and promote traditional methods, and to change attitudes to vernacular structures.

Ways of building, living, eating, gathering, farming, closely tied to the materials provided by the land, are the story that the WARE Living Museum hopes to tell in one small location.

The WARE Collective is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Jamaican culture and heritage through various initiatives, including art exhibitions, educational programmes, and the development of the Living Museum of Jamaican Heritage in St Elizabeth, celebrating Jamaica’s vibrant history and artistic expression.