The first phase of converting the burial ground at St. Philip’s Church into a public heritage site honouring the Kingstown community and the people who were buried there is about a month away from completion, an organiser said last week.
“It took a bit of effort to get the proper stones, but it was important for the wall to have that look, replicating what you see on the church itself,” Dr. Smith said, adding that both the wall and a parking area should be completed within about a month.
APVIH is the non-profit group driving the memorial project, but the church and property belong to the Episcopal Church.
Father Ronald Branche, the rector of St. George’s Episcopal in Road Town, said he supports the project because it’s important for both visitors and residents to have a location where they can learn about and honour the memory of the liberated Africans who lived in the community in the early 1800s.
“This is a really important piece of history for both the church and territory,” he said.
In addition to the wall and parking area, the site will get footpaths, benches, stone grave markers, and a large memorial piece “similar to what you might see at other African memorial sites,” Dr. Smith said.
The group has already raised about half of the $60,000 it needs for wall construction, and intends to carry out additional fundraising soon. It has also received pledges from donors including Meridian Construction and Cedar International School to provide benches at the site.
One of the most important goals of the project is to learn more about the people who lived and were eventually buried in the village churchyard, Dr. Smith said.
Researchers like fellow APVIH member and author Dr. Patricia Turn- bull have discovered the names of some who lived in the village, and will learn more with further research, she added.
To ensure that the individual graves get marked correctly, ground-penetrating radar will be used to confirm their locations.
“Even though we want to move ahead with the project quickly, we want to be respectful. It is a burial ground,” Dr. Smith said. “The visible mounds are a start, but if you look at the rocks, they’ve been added recently. That tells us those mounds were added to recently.”
Eventually, the church hopes to add an interpretive centre at the site that will help people learn more about the village.
“We hope it will be a very dynamic interpretive centre, but that’s coming at a later time,” she said.
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