Achance encounter led SO to the story behind The Hermitage located in Bluefields, Westmoreland, related by Bluefields Bay Villas CEO Debbie Moncure…

My husband Braxton and I arrived at Bluefields in 1981 beginning our family’s journey of what I often say has been a creation of “our own world”. However, that is not entirely true, as our work in so many ways channelled the Jamaican world that existed in previous days — and before the current trend of white boxes with too much glass and too little ventilation. But first a little history of how The Hermitage came to be: In March of 1989, we attended a Washington, DC function honouring former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley who had just been the first foreign dignitary to meet with President George H W Bush. As we left and after a long and lovely discussion with then Foreign Affairs Minister David Coore, I was struck by a drunk driver and sustained a head wound that rendered me unconscious and unable to remember. I worried that I would never be the same again. After recuperating for three months and with our two small kids in tow, we travelled to Bluefields, Jamaica, where I designed the basics of The Hermitage in a mere two weeks. I have always felt this villa was my saviour.

Construction began in October 1989, about seven years before phone lines reached Bluefields. Wonderful local builder Lloyd Crooks (still doing projects for us!) provided tilers who laid floors with then available Hellshire marble, masterful masons who clad insides of block walls with local limestone, and careful carpenters who cut cedar stair balusters and more on trestles set up in the outside yard. I am so glad those exist as they were my version of what was in Black River but are now gone after Hurricane Melissa. Outside treatment of concrete block walls was my method of having them resemble large building blocks and not need painting. Splendid 8’ curved-top doors, louvre windows, and built-in mahogany armoires were originally done by a Mr Barrett of Savanna-la-Mar, now deceased, who retired in Jamaica after a career in London working for Harrods. Hurricane Melissa tore out most of those doors and windows that happily have now been replaced.

After 16 months of construction and furnishing, our first guests arrived in January 1991. My husband Braxton, who passed away last April, was a masterful collector of antiques and adored what he found in Jamaica. The Hermitage, as well as our other villa properties, feature antique four-poster canopy beds, mahogany sideboards, and all the rest of what had been in Jamaican great houses. As nearly all The Hermitage’s roofs were blown away in Melissa, much of its large antiques collection got destroyed or badly damaged. Thankfully, Jamaica still has an incredibly talented furniture restorer, notably Wayne Nasralla, of Kingston, who put most of those possessions back into usable order.

Post-Melissa, growth of gardens was so supercharged in Bluefields that new visitors would not know that hurricane had happened even though it hit us with 185mph winds. By March, guests were able to stay in the villa and again lounge on cobblestone patios made from the sea-smoothed stones collected below the home, back in 1990. We are extremely proud of the fabulous work done by so many persons to help put “our world” back together again. It is a true testimonial to the resilience of the Jamaican people — and yet another reason why our Moncure Family chose to settle in and become citizens of this wonderful country.