By Michael Anthony

Sunday Guardian

November 16, 1997

Page 16

This letter-book dates back to 1848, when San Fernando was run by a Town Council. At this time, the president of the Town Council - the first - was Robert Floyd, ad the Town Hall was occupying it first home at the northern corner of Chacon and King Streets. The strip of ground that the Town Council "was pleased to call Harris Promenade" lay roughly parallel to High Street on the southern fringes of San Fernando. It bordered the edge of Paradise Estate, of which only paradise Pasture remains today. It appears that Lord Harris granted the strip of land to the Town Council not long after he arrived here as Governor on April 28, 1846.

Harris came shortly after the ordinance that established the Town Council took effect, that date being March 31, 1846. The governor, who had brought in the ordinance, was just lucky to see it proclaimed before he sailed away. He was Sir Henry MacLeod, and he left Trinidad on April 21, 1846 - just one week before Lord Harris arrived.

MacLeod had taken office here in June 1840 and the first thing he did was to abolish the Cabildo of Port-of-Spain, replacing it with a Town Council. This gave San Fernandians the cue to clamour for a Town Council as well, on the grounds that this town was the key to the island's economy, being the chief port of the sugar-rich Naparimas.

MacLeod soon found this to be true, and worked on a municipal ordinance for San Fernando. But delays in getting the royal assent prolonged matters until 1846.

As was said, Harris arrived on April 28, 1846, so he had hardly unpacked when he received the request for land from the Town Council of San Fernando.

The root of San Fernando's land problem lay in a grant of land Spanish Governor Chacon had made in 1786 to a settler called Isidore Vialva. Chacon had made the grant stipulating that part of the land be reserved for a town, but Vialva illegally sold the land. The buyer, Jean-Baptiste Jaillet, cared little about the stipulation and used part of the land to open an estate, Mon Chagrin. This, incidentally, was the first sugar estate in the Naparimas. Jaillet divided the rest of the land and sold it in lots.

Governor Chacon knew nothing of this transaction, and when he declared San Fernando a town in 1792, all the land was private land. He could do nothing at that stage.

The destruction of San Fernando by fire in 1818 only worsened the problem. For after the fire no one could find land deeds, and the situation was chaotic. But it was when San Fernando got the town charter in 1846 the real problem arose. For unless the Town Council could then buy land for its public buildings the only solution was a crown grant.

Lord Harris understood this and was sympathetic. Yet with an education plan in mind, for which he needed money, he might have well asked himself: "Why can't the San Fernando Town Council buy its own land at the good price of $9.60 an acre?" However, he visited San Fernando very promptly, involved as he was with the settlement of indentured workers who had arrived in 1845, and some of whom were being sent to Naparima estates. After being petitioned for the grant he was said to have chosen and even surveyed the land himself. The Town Council had asked him for the land to erect their public buildings, but Harris dedicated the land not only to the erection of public buildings but as a promenade for the people to enjoy. He visualized churches among the public buildings and he also visualized people taking "untroubled walks and recreation."

At the period the letter was written seeking permission to graze cattle in the promenade the essential San Fernando consisted of just five proper streets, and Harris Promenade was going to make the sixth. The first of these streets was of course High Street, the old Spanish royal road. (All the royal roads led to Amerindian missions. What became Cipero Street was the royal road that led to Siparia).

The other streets were St James, Chacon, Penitence, San Fernando and St Andrew. Of course there were several pathways which later became streets.

These streets were kept graveled, but Harris promenade was a strip, which although cleared of brushwood, was taken over by lush long grass.

There must have been a little track along it because Louis Romain, the second president of the Town Council and later twice mayor of San Fernando, opened a shop at its western end.

The Roman Catholics were the first to build a church here. The construction took a long time, but was finished in 1849. It was about halfway on the promenade, on the same spot it occupies now. In keeping with the widely spoken French of the day it was called the church of "Notre Dame de Bons Secours". (Our Lady of Good Help).

Shortly afterwards the authorities built a market house at the western end, and mainly because of this market house there was a call to construct a road from this end of Harris Promenade to High Street, to give easier access to shoppers. It was not till 1850 that this road, Chancery Lane, was constructed.

The man who was to transform Harris Promenade came on the scene in 1846, the very year the Town Council was granted. He was the lawyer and civil engineer Robert Guppy, who later became Town Clerk, and was mayor a record nine times.

Guppy had arrived in Trinidad from England in 1839 to handle some land matters, arising from the abolition of slavery, but his heart was in civil engineering, and he took upon himself the duty of laying out Harris Promenade. He wanted to make it a work of art and provided for a wide walkway in the centre of two carriage roads. He even planted samaan trees, a few of which are still standing.

While the little trees were growing Guppy was helping Willian Eccles lay down the first railway in Trinidad, the Cipero Tramway. This was a tramway to bring the sugarcane out of the Naparima estates, including Eccles' own estate, Les Efforts, to the San Fernando wharf. It began from what is now Tramway Avenue in Princes Town, ran roughly along the banks of the Cipero River, then crossing the Cipero Cross, making it Cross Crossing, it continued to the San Fernando wharf along the path known now as the Kirton-Rienzi Highway, formerly Lady Hailes Avenue.

Not long after this a private Borough Council line branched off from the main line, creating what was later called "Broadway", but now "Independence Avenue". On reaching the high ground to the west of Broadway a cutting or gorge had to be made to enable the freight trams to get to the San Fernando wharf. In 1867 this gorge was cut through where the hospital and Chancery Lane car park are now. Long before this, while the Cipero Tramway was being constructed, the former hospital, at the top of St. Andrew Street, was becoming a reality, and the promenade was a quick route to it from Coffee Street. The hospital was built in 1858 and the Cipero Tramway was finished and opened in March 1859.

But to go back. By the year the Catholic Church was completed, 1849, some of the members of the San Fernando Town Council were disgruntled. They were in their rented ramshackle Town Hall at the corner of King and Chacon Streets, but what about the Promenade that Guppy had begun to lay out? Lord Harris had given that strip of land for public buildings and it was time to move. The Town Council did not have money to speak of but it was soon agreed that a Town Hall of some sort had to be constructed on Harris Promenade. Especially so as a move was being made to give Port of Spain borough status, a status which San Fernando had to have too!

In 1851 Lord Harris came to the end of his five-year term and left, but there was so much unfinished business that no one was surprised he was sent back, the only governor to leave and return. When he returned in 1852 a Municipal Corporations Ordinance was awaiting attention in London, an act that was prepared for both Port of Spain and San Fernando. The San Fernando Town Council was anxious that the new ordinance should not meet them in the ramshackle premises, and on July 1, 1853, a report in the San Fernando Gazette announced a new town hall was to be built. It added: "The work will be commenced immediately and finished in four months. The hall will front the promenade at a short distance to the westward of the Roman Catholic Church."

When the Municipal Corporations Ordinance (No. 10 of 1853) came into force on August 10, 1853, workmen were hard at work constructing the Town hall for the new Borough of San Fernando. This building was finished in four months, as the builders had promised, for they handed over the building that November. However, it was not quite in time for the first borough elections of November 1, 1853 and the mayoral elections of a few days later.

Those first borough councilors of San Fernando looked out on a Harris Promenade that was well laid out, properly graveled and with a walkway planted with small trees. The nine men making history were Louis Romain, William Huggins, Robert Johnstone, Alexander Caldwell, Thomas Brown, Samuel Nicol, John Daly, Alex Wallen and Pierre Lasalle. Robert Johnstone made further history when his colleagues chose him as the first mayor of San Fernando.

Harris Promenade now became a focal point and one of the prominent streets of San Fernando. At the southern corner of the High Street end of it people took to selling meat and vegetables, making it a sort of market place. Then, as a result of a cholera epidemic that had taken place in 1854 and now caused a small cemetery on Chacon Street to close, in January 1868 the borough council bought land from Paradise Estate and opened Paradise Cemetery. But to be sure, it was not only the dead who were being catered for at this time. In fact, the Canadian missionaries John and Sarah Morton were drawn to this promenade soon after their arrival in January 1868, and they eventually established a mission church near the corner of Penitence Street and Harris Promenade.

Shortly afterwards Trinidad had the honour of a visit by the famous English writer, Charles Kingsley. This author of "The Heroes", "Hereward the Wake", and so many other popular books, arrived here on Christmas Eve 1869 to spend Christmas with his friend, Governor Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon. Kingsley, who at that time began to write "At Last, a Christmas in the West Indies", came down with Gordon to a big agricultural exhibition at the Town Hall in January, 1870, and it is very much of a pity that he did not use his powers of description to tell us what Harris Promenade looked like.

In 1871 a meat market was constructed on the southern corner of the High Street end of Harris Promenade, which made that part look even more of a market place now, because of the number of market transactions taking place there. The area was well shaded by Guppy's samaan trees, which were already robust and growing well.

Then in March 1874, a new Court House was inaugurated on Harris Promenade. This building was about middle-distance on the promenade, on the spot where the San Fernando police headquarters is today. Very soon afterwards, in July 1874, the foundation stone of St Paul's Anglican Church was laid towards the Chancery Lane end of Harris Promenade. This church, too, is on the same spot today.

When one considers that in 1879 a Wesleyan Church was being built at the High Street end of the promenade, one would concede that the churches took full advantage of Harris's plan.

Now to the next year 1880. In January 1880 two English princes, George and Albert, came on the promenade to board a horse-drawn tramcar for a sight-seeing tour, but they, too, like Kingsley, admired the promenade but wrote nothing about it in a book which came later. (These are the princes, Victoria's grandsons, who planted the two poui trees at Mission Village, after which Mission Village was called Princes Town. Prince George became King George V).

The last point of interest to draw attention to is, once again, the meat market. The meat market, which in 1871 was put at the eastern end of Harris promenade, proved too small, and in 1887 a proper market was erected there. That market, which lasted on that spot until 1917, is the same market that is on Prince Alfred Street today. It was removed from the original spot to make way for that gift from Andrew Carnegie - the free library. The library was opened in January 1919.

These are a few of the "memories" of the promenade that Lord Harris donated to San Fernando in 1846.

By the time the 19^th century closed Harris Promenade was substantially the same as it is today, except that it was not paved, for asphalt streets had not yet come to San Fernando. By that time, 1900, Guppy's samaan trees were quite grown and had made Harris Promenade shady and picturesque - a thing of beauty. What would it be like after the new works are completed?

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