The Bermuda National Trust, in its Hamilton Town and City book, states that “in March 1813, the Corporation of Hamilton began to consider selling lots to the Government in advance of the proposed transfer of the ‘seat of government’ from St George. It was decided to place the proposed Government House in the block later known as Parker’s Hill, where the Gosling’s warehouse is now sited. However, the next year, plans were made to purchase the current site on Langton Hill instead”.

In August 1823, the Corporation of Hamilton was engaging labour for the reduction of hills within city limits. The high hill known as Parker’s Hill near the Brunswick Hotel was to be reduced and a roadway running parallel to Angle Street was to be made. The other hill under construction was Christensen’s Hill, commonly called “Crisson’s Hill’. These hills provided playgrounds for children in the area especially during kite-flying season. ”Crisson’s Hill“ was excavated in the early 1950s for the building of the Victoria Street Health Clinic.

When my husband and I were children in the late 1940s, we attended the Kingsley Health Clinic in a building on the corner of King Street and Victoria Street in a house named Kingsley, which is now The Salvation Army’s Harbour Lights facility. The dental department was on the lower level while the clinic was upstairs. Although I have mentioned “Crisson’s Hill”, my interest lies in Parker’s Hill, the higher of the two, and the loss of the community that resided upon it.

In 1818, Samuel J. Parker Sr, a Black man born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, migrated to Bermuda with his Scottish wife and children. Ira Philip, in his book Freedom Fighters, describes the family as successful business people, substantial landowners, grocers, music teachers and printers. One of his sons, John J. Parker, graduated from Dalhousie University.

In 1871, Mr Parker purchased the Chronicle from Messrs Kempe and Childers, and involved his entire family in establishing Bermuda’s first Black newspaper, The Bermuda Times, whose motto was:

“For the Cause that lacks Assistance

For the Wrong that needs Resistance

For the Future in the Distance

And the Good that we can do”

In 1875, the name was changed to The Times and Advocate. This family dominated Bermuda’s newspaper world for 30 years.

For more detailed information refer to The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily Special Centenary Edition — History of Bermuda’s Newspapers, published on Saturday, January 14, 1928.

Samuel J Parker died in 1892 at the age of 74. His son, John, died seven years later and Mrs Parker continued the newspaper business as the People’s Journal with her daughter as business manager. The editors were William H. Lacey and the Reverend Charles V. Monk, a skilled printer, writer and AME minister who arrived in Bermuda from America in 1898.

Parker’s Hill, systematically excavated in 1968, is believed to have originally been owned and named for this influential family, who also had a school there.

It was 45 years after the first discussions by the corporation that The Royal Gazette of December 18,1968 stated a “back-of-town area in Hamilton in the vicinity of Elliott Street is now in the throes of being changed completely.

“Already one private home has been demolished on the northern side of the street as the Bermuda Stone Company press on with their plan to build a concrete block factory there — which will be the first business of its kind to be located within the city limits.

“The area taken over by the firm runs from Elliott Street to Dundonald Street and stretches to Angle Street. Eight more houses are yet to come down on Elliott Street. On the southern side, it runs approximately the full length of the road between Brunswick Street and Princess Street. This lot is 500 feet by 150 feet deep and is 73 feet high from street level. It is known as Parker’s Hill and has virtually nothing on it and is solid stone.

“Cutting on the northern side of Elliott Street is now in progress and in this spot will be the storage yard for concrete blocks and building products. Parker’s Hill will be excavated by means of cutting the stone. A spokesman for the firm told The Royal Gazette he estimated 100,000 cubic yards of stone in the hill, which will be cut to street level. Here the company will put a concrete block plant, which will produce products for building throughout the colony. Available on the site will be Bermuda stone, concrete blocks, cement supplies, building screening and sand. There will be six employees running the block factory and 24 on the stone-cutting side. Permission for the business to be established in the area has been given by the planning authorities.”

On Tuesday, The Royal Gazette of August 1969 reported that ”the company went into business officially yesterday but already a large chunk of Parker’s Hill in the ‘back of town’ has been eaten away.

“The man behind the scheme is Mike Marshall, a 29-year-old Bermudian businessman from Spanish Point, who owns Bermuda Concrete Products, Marshall’s Maintenance Co, a cleaning operation, and Marshall’s Enterprises, an importing agency.

“He and an eight-man crew are tearing down Parker’s Hill as the first part of a big scheme to build a block holding 300 apartments. Digging work started in January and Mr Marshall thinks it will take four years for the hill to be completely removed and nothing will go to waste.”

Much of the sand from Parker’s Hill was used in the construction of the Holiday Inn Hotel in St George’s, which was completed in 1973.

My husband, as I have often mentioned, grew up on Dundonald Street. In the 1950s, Parker’s Hill for him, was the place for kite-flying. On Good Friday, the children in the neighbourhood always entered The Hill from the Dundonald Street side between where H&H Plumbing is today and Gosling’s warehouse. It was a steep climb up a narrow rugged path. You had to secure your kite to your back to free up your hands for carrying a bag of hot cross buns and for holding on to the cedar tree branches to pull you up over large stones and other vegetation. It was the perfect spot — large enough to accommodate all the neighbourhood children for an entire day of fun and freedom.

Claudette Cann grew up in a semi-detached, two-bedroom family house on the top of Parker’s Hill owned by Richard A. Pulley. She recalled at the foot of the hill was a very large two-storey house where the Furbert family lived. The next was another very large house owned by Mr Gihon; in fact, there were three houses on Parker’s Hill owned by members of the Gihon family. There were steps, obviously, not approved by the Department of Planning, as they were in no way uniform — but they led all the way to the top of the hill. Using these steps was the only way to access the houses.

James Elias Gihon, the grandfather of Jennifer Gihon-Waelzholz, had a blacksmith’s shop in the backyard of his home. The horses were brought up a path for shoeing, while the carriages were left at the bottom of the hill. Like many families in that era, he also kept chicken coups and an incinerator at the back of the house.

I had forgotten about the incinerator everyone kept in their backyard for burning trash. It was always a large oil drum obtained from the Oil Docks at Ferry Reach and used mainly for burning paper. In the days before plastic trash bags, cans and bottles were the only thing you put out for trash collection. Everyone had a grey, metal trash container, which had a lid and handles on each side.

Some of the residents had ice boxes and no one envied Mr Dill, the man who delivered it up all those steps. Claudette Cann’s family bought their ice from the stalls near where Miles is today located. Her brothers would set out with their wooden box cart, which rolled on baby carriage wheels, to collect the ice and race home as fast as their legs could take them.

Although the children had lots of area to play at the very top of the hill, the area was not secure and on one occasion, shortly after Good Friday, her seven-year-old sister who was launching a box kite, stepped backwards and fell off the steep cliff. She was in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for nine months with a fractured hip. The area was then secured with fencing. Her mother held parties for the many children who lived on the Hill. There were Guy Fawkes parties with sweet potato pudding and the burning of the Guy dressed in her father’s old clothes. The burning of the Guy could be seen far down Dundonald Street and this attracted more children to the Hill.

At the end of summer, there was a back-to-school parties for all the children. It was a happy, contented community and everyone had pets — guinea pigs, rabbits, ducks, geese, chickens, pigeons, cats, dogs and goats. They enjoyed catching lizards with lassoes made from strips of cane grass, and catching caterpillars in vented glass bottles.

There were numerous cherry and loquat trees laden with fruit in season, and most families kept small vegetable gardens whose crops they shared. At Christmastime, there were so many cedar trees that if your mother did not like the shape of the branch that was cut down, you were sent to cut another. And on Boxing Day, the Gombeys arrived with their rhythmic drum beat, gaily coloured costumes and intricate dance steps.

When Claudette Cann’s brother was 15, he secured a job working in the laundry of the Queen of Bermuda. Somehow they failed to ask his age and assumed he was 16, so off he went on a new adventure.

The view from the hill was spectacular and this enabled his family to see both the Queen of Bermuda and the Ocean Monarch sailing every Monday morning through Two Rock Passage into Hamilton, bringing their brother home.

Every morning they could see the Roman Catholic nuns leaving the convent on their way to Mass at St Theresa’s Cathedral. In the summer, they wore white habits and in the winter, they were black and white. They could see the priests crossing the road from their residence for Mass, and when there was a funeral at St John’s Church, they could see the mourners and the entire burial ceremony.

She could see her mother walking along Cedar Avenue on her way home from work, and their mother could see them in the afternoon walking home from The Central School as she collected the laundry from the clothesline.

They could see the fires that destroyed the Hamilton and Bermudiana hotels. with the firetrucks racing through Black Watch Pass from the American base to assist in quelling the fires — and there was always the smell of rum from Gosling’s warehouse below.

In a documentary provided by CITV, many of the former residents described the joy of living on The Hill. There were lots of children to play with in this close-knit community. The grassy area at the top of the hill provided space for playing hide-and-seek, rounders, cricket, football, marbles, areas to spin tops and play jacks, and for “playing house”. The grassy area was so large that the Young Men’s Social Club team trained there.

Everything changed when the houses were gradually purchased and demolished. Records show that in 1969, John Michael Marshall purchased the eight remaining properties and demolished them. An indenture dated January 20, 1970 granted him three-year possession of lots 31and 33 on Elliott Street belonging to Gosling Brothers, allowing him to take away the fill and “get the stone”.

There were two owners who presented a delay. Eunice Bertha Gihon, the twin sister of James E. Gihon, held out despite excavation taking place all around her and refused to sell until she received a comparable amount to purchase a property and home similar in size to what she already owned.

The other was Reginald Hilgrove Stovell, whose family remain in the family home named “Hilltop” on the corner of Princess Street and Elliott Street. According to the CITV interviewm his daughter explained that Mr Marshall would take her father to view houses he felt suitable. The family knew he had no intention of selling and asked why he continued to look at properties. His amusing reply was that, he enjoyed the outings!

There was a sense of sadness upon the completion of this writing. I had read the history of Tucker’s Town in the 1920s and as the Smith’s Parish district nurse in the 1960s I met the descendants of displaced families and listened to their stories. More recently I completed the reading of Elaine Fox’s book describing the devastating loss of the Southside, St. David’s community in the 1940’s.

Parker’s Hill is a modern-day account of another lost community.

• Cecille Snaith-Simmons is a retired nurse, historian, writer and author of The Bermuda Cookbook. With thanks to Al Seymour Jr, of CITV, and those whose names appear within the article. I also thank my research partners, Linda Abend and Lionel Simmons

References not listed within the article:

The Way We Were (CITV documentary)

City of Hamilton land transfer assessment ledger (The Bermuda Archives)