HE WILL?forever be known as the Father of Independence, but historic landmarks linked to Errol Barrow are slowly disappearing.
The National Hero’s childhood home at The Garden, St Lucy, and the first official Prime Minister’s residence at Culloden Farm, St Michael, where he spent most of his time as leader of Barbados, are both in a state of ruin while his vacation home, Kampala, at Paradise, St Michael, where he entertained all and sundry, has reportedly been sold.
Historian Trevor Marshall has called Barbados’ failure to restore at least one of these properties for heritage tourism disgraceful.
“It is really a pity, more than a pity, a disgrace to think that his birthplace and Culloden Farm, which he made the first official home of the Prime Minister of Barbados, that those places are dilapidated, run to ruin, looking even unrecognizable from what they were in their heyday – and that we are selling out one more piece of Barbados which was his retreat.
“It does not surprise me because we pay a lot of lip service to the heritage of our National Heroes,” Marshall said. He recalled that the home of the only woman National Hero Sara-Ann Gill was torn down by the Methodist Church, “the argument being offered that she never lived in it”.
