Good Hope Estate was established in 1744 as a 1,000-acre plantation surrounding a prominent bend in the Martha Brae River in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica. Under an existing land grant conveyed to Col. Thomas Williams, the property was cleared of trees, connected to one of the parish’s public roads, and developed with a infrastructure for sugar cultivation. In 1767, the plantation and its already large enslaved labor-force were purchased by John Tharp (1744–1804), a 23-year old Anglo-Jamaican planter who would late serve as Custos of Trelawny Parish, and by the late–18th century, become the largest slave owner in Jamaica. Most of the plantation’s infrastructure and built environment as it exists today is a product of Tharp’s “improvements” to the plantation, with a particularly ambitious building campaign from 1790 to 1802.
As a resident proprietor, John Tharp yielded significant successes and influence, quickly becoming one of the island’s wealthiest landowners. His period as an absentee owner between 1792 and 1800, splitting time between a London townhouse and Cambridgeshire estate, was short lived after a marital scandal brought him back to Jamaica (Pearsall 2008). Minus these absent years, from the 1770s through 1804, Good Hope served as the place of residence for Tharp as he oversaw the affairs of his sugar estates and cattle pens in Trelawny, St. Ann, and St. James Parish. By the 1790s, this included seven contiguous sugar estates and two cattle pens along the Martha Brae River in Trelawny, and two additional sugar estates in neighboring Parishes. A probate inventory taken after Tharp’s death records over 2,800 enslaved individuals on these estates, 484 of which were living and working at Good Hope estate.
Following Tharp’s death in 1804, the plantation remained in operation under a succession of attorneys and relatives through full Emancipation in 1838. In 1840, Good Hope and two adjacent Tharp plantations were purchased by Frederick Robert Coy, and English-born sugar proprietor. Coy employed both newly freed Jamaicans and East Indian laborers (Castello 1877), and in doing, continued sugar and rum production at Good Hope through 1878. Between 1880 and the late–1890s, the plantation rapidly declined under the heirs of Coy, falling into a state of overgrowth and disrepair. In 1898, the property was purchased by Captain Alexander Oppenheim who converted Good Hope into a grazing pen, maintaining 300 heads of cattle annually between 1901 and 1908 (Ford and Cundall 1908). The property changed hands once gain in 1912 to John F. Thompson, a banker and developer from New York. Initially using the land for logwood growth, Thompson would later revitalize the deteriorating property, converting Good Hope into an exclusive resort in the early years of the island’s tourism industry. The resort, known as the Good Hope Hotel, operated from the early–1920s through 1950, catering to wealthy European patrons, British royalty, and the island’s late-colonial leadership (Ogilvie 1954).
Main House Complex
The Good Hope great house sits atop a large hill overlooking former sugar cane fields and distant mountains. For the most part, the great house lacks visual communication with most structures on the plantation, with viewsheds limited to the plantation warehouse, hospital, and doctor’s house. The great house sits on a slight slope, giving it two story eastern elevation and single-story western elevation.
Architectural evidence establishes a reliable relative chronology for the great house itself.
Today, two gable-end wings, oriented North-South, are connected by a central block oriented East-West. While this central block houses the entrance passage, orienting the entire house East-West, it is likely that this arrangement was a transformation of the 1790s. Subtle differences in elevation, masonry, and interior carpentry suggest that the south gable-wing is much earlier (ca. 1755), and might have served as the great house under the plantation’s first period of ownership (Nelson 2011). By the 1780s/1790s, this two-room building had expanded out into at least nine rooms, and a new approach to the house from the east had been constructed.
Many Tharp-era (1767–1804) outbuildings survive along the south and west elevations of the great house. This includes a large carriage house situated on the approach to the house, a kitchen and laundry, and a two-story privy containing the great house’s original Williams-era (1744–1766) cornerstone. A more unusual outbuilding, a counting house constructed by John Tharp, sits at the center of this complex at a slightly higher elevation. Records indicate that several Tharp-era outbuildings no longer survive, including a stand-alone range of rooms to the north and a large fish pond at the western end of the complex. A measured floor plan of the great house was recorded by Edward Chappell in 1995. Measured elevation drawings of the great house, carriage house, privy, and counting house were produced by the University of Virginia’s 2010 Historic Preservation Field School under Dr. Louis Nelson.
While no known written records on the slave village survive, a 1794 survey plat of Good Hope depicts its precise location and general representation of the internal organization. Approximately 50 small dwellings, labeled “Negro Houses,” with adjoining house gardens, are drawn beneath numerous coconut trees and surrounded by a series of low stone walls. A road intersects a portion of the village, asymmetrically dividing it at its western edge. Roughly 28300 m2 (or 7 acres) in size, the village is situated in close proximity to the plantation’s industrial core, with blacksmith, carpentry, cooping, and plumbing (i.e. lead working) workshops located on or near the village perimeter.
The overseer’s house and slave hospital stand a short distance to the north facing the sugar works, while the plantation doctor’s house formerly sat atop a knoll overlooking the village.
Little is known about the earliest enslaved population on the plantation, and archaeological evidence suggests that Good Hope’s earliest village (1744–1766) was located elsewhere on the plantation. The village, as recoded in 1794, was likely established in the area southeast of the sugar works when John Tharp purchased the plantation in 1767. Tharp, actively involved in the British slave trade, continued to expand Good Hope’s enslaved population through his death in 1804. By the early 19th-century, annual returns record an average of 414 individuals living in the village in any given year. This number peaked in 1803, and rapidly declined in the years preceding Emancipation in 1838.
Overseer's House and Slave Hospital
The overseer’s house, slave hospital, and two possible bookkeepers’ cottages stand facing one another to form a small administrative complex north of the slave village. The overseer’s east-facing entrance directly aligns with the hospital’s west facing entrance to ensure visibility of the hospital’s coming and goings (Bassett 2014). Upon the same axis, two stone cottages that might have housed Good Hope’s two bookkeepers face the overseer’s house.
While it is unsure exactly when the overseer’s house was constructed, it is likely the oldest building in this complex. Two stories tall, the building is divided in elevation, with spacious living quarters above a series of secure rooms serving as the plantation’s storehouse. Presumably, provisions and tools for the nearby-enslaved population were kept here in locked rooms, accessible by a doorway beneath the building’s lobby entrance. From the late–18 century through 1815, the house was likely occupied by at least one overseer and John Harewood, the illegitimate son of John Tharp. Although some have described Harewood as Good Hope’s overseer, account records note that he actually served the more lucrative position of plantation manager. Adjacent to the house, ruins of the overseer’s kitchen can be found to the north, and other unknown foundations are found to the south.
The masonry shell of the slave hospital, constructed in 1798, partially stands and has recently undergone stabilization efforts. The hospital is the only building at Good Hope for which an original architectural drawing survives. This record indicates that the building was designed by Thomas Paterson, a Scottish planter living a few miles from Good Hope, and delineated by John Tharp’s merchant nephew, Alexander Campbell (Bassett 2014). While the building began as a hospital serving the enslaved population across Tharp’s estates, the building combined and shifted several functions over the course of the early–19th century, ranging from healthcare, to a penitentiary, to a school, and eventually an Anglican church bearing the name St. Peter’s (Bassett 2014).
Mill, Sugar Works, and Store House
The first record of a mill at Good Hope comes from a 1760s map of Jamaica by Thomas Craskell (1763), indicating that a water mill was in use by this time. By the late 18th-century, both a water mill and a cattle mill served Good Hope, the latter replacing the former during dry periods. As with many sugar estates, the water mill was assisted by an aqueduct that ensured a reliable and controllable water velocity. Taking advantage of the natural topography, the aqueduct took the form of an in-ground “gutter,” which supplied not only Good Hope, but also Tharp’s downriver water mills at Lansquenet and Potosi estates.
The water mill at Good Hope is situated across the Martha Brae River from the sugar works. Once cane stalks were fed through the mill rollers, sugar juice was carried by gravity in a “sluice” over the river bridge, pouring directly into collection vats in the boiling house. The boiling house as it stands today contains three components. The earliest is a long projection to the north, which likely served the plantation prior to 1767, under its first period of ownership (Nelson 2011:154). John Tharp appears to have expanded the works as a combined boiling house and rum distillery sometime between 1770 and 1790. In 1802, the works was expanded yet again, and outfitted to increase capacity and efficiency.
After sugar juice was processed into granular sugar, cured, and packed, barrels (or hogsheads) of
sugar and puncheons of rum were kept in a storehouse in the center of the plantation. This two-story masonry warehouse structure, constructed in 1790, stands just up the road from the works, north of the overseer’s house. The doublewide doors and elevated masonry ramp allowed barrels to be rolled in and out, directly to and from carts. Across the road, a building of unknown function, likely constructed in the early–19th century, might have served as an administrative office for the plantation.
Archaeological Excavations at Good Hope
The first archaeological excavations began at Good Hope in May of 2014, led by Hayden Bassett. Prior to this, a pilot non-collection pedestrian survey was conducted at the village site in 2013 to establish its boundaries and determine a sampling strategy for the first season of excavation. The 2014 Good Hope Village excavation used a shovel-test-pit methodology to survey a large section of the slave village to establish a chronology and explore the range of household variation within the plantation’s enslaved community. In total, 182 shovel-test-pits were excavated by a team of professionals and students, which included majors of archaeology from the University of the West Indies (Mona), and American students participating in Falmouth Heritage Renewal’s 2014 Field School of Tangible Heritage.
This initial season was sponsored by the College of William & Mary, the DAACS Research Consortium (DRC), the DAACS Caribbean Initiative (DCI), and the Reves Center. Post-fieldwork analysis was funded by the International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS), the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), and the College of William and Mary.
College of William and Mary