St Kitts Traditional Lunch & Half Day Island Tour

The Circus is the hub of Basseterre. It is a recognised landmark and a popular meeting place. The Circus owes its origins to the fire that destroyed Basseterre on July 4th, 1867. The whole town east of West Square street was devastated. The inefficiencies of the fire department were, at least in part, responsible for the magnitude of the disaster. When Basseterre was rebuilt, it was decided to make its streets easier for the fire truck to navigate. Among the new arrangements were the widening of Fort Street and the laying down of the Circus.

The Berkeley Memorial was erected in 1883 and was for a long time the only public memorial commemorating an individual in St. Kitts. It was dedicated to the memory of Thomas Berkeley Hardtman Berkeley, a legislator and owner of the estates called Fountain, Greenland, Greenhill, Ottleys, Shadwell and Stone Fort.

INDEPENDENCE SQUARE formerly Pall Mall Square, was renamed on the 19th September 1983 to commemorate the birth of the new nation of St. Christopher and Nevis. It is located on the eastern side of Basseterre bordering on Newtown. Its layout was designed to look like a Union Jack and the streets and houses surrounding it once dated to the mid-eighteenth century.

CO-CATHEDRAL OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION is an ornate church constructed out of grey stone and located on the eastern side of Independence Square. In the early years of the French occupation of St. Kitts, the Jesuits had build a Roman Catholic Church and dedicated it to Our Lady. Notre Dame was burned in 1706 during the Anglo-French war and rebuilt later as St. Georges Anglican Church. The catholic congregation in St. Kitts diminished drastically in the years following the Treaty of Utrecht.

ST. GEORGE’S ANGLICAN CHURCH is the largest church in Basseterre. It stands at the head of Church Street and resembles an English parish church in style. The outer walls are of heavy andesite rock and the roof is covered in slate. Like many of the buildings in Basseterre this church has had its ups and downs, often rising from ashes like the mythical Phoenix.

THE WAR MEMORIAL was originally unveiled in 1926 at the place now occupied by the Post Office. It honoured the men who died in the First World War.

Old Road Town was settled on January 28, 1624 by Thomas Warner, his wife Rebecca, his son Edward and 14 others. The settlers were at first on good terms with the island's native Carib residents, though that lasted only a very few years in the Carib's homeland. Rather than cultivating sugar cane, it was tobacco that had drawn Warner to the island, and it was the island's tobacco crop that first supported the settlement. The colony prospered and more settlements were built and by 1727, Basseterre became the capital after the expulsion of the French in 1713.

Bloody Point is situated to the west of Challengers Village. It gets its name from the Massacre of the Kalinago that took place in the vicinity.English and French settlements had been set up on St. Kitts in 1624 and 1625. From the start, Warner and his men treated the Tegreman and his people as hostiles.

Wingfield Estate was the property of the John Jeafferson, who along with his brother Samuel accompanied Thomas Warner in the first attempt at colonization. In 1660 it was inherited by Christopher Jeafferson who leased it to Charles Pym. The first permanent plantation settlement of the English Caribbean was in the area now occupied by Wingfield and Romney estates. The settlement had fortified buildings and was close to the spiritual places of the Kalinago which made them feel anxiety over the number of newcomers to the island. It was a place of cultural conflict. The Kalinago offered hospitality but the Europeans often misunderstood the very different social norms of the people they had encountered. This lead to unacceptable behaviour which may have been aggressive and made the newcomers even more threatening.

Romney Manor is a historic estate as it was initially the home of Kalinago Chief Tegraman who provided food and shelter to Thomas Warner and his men in 1623. They were the first British settlers on St Kitts which is known as the mother colony of the West Indies.