THE EDITOR Sir,
I AM compelled to comment on a recent return visit to Jamaica. Congratulations are due to the owners on a fine reconstruction of the main portion of Rose Hall Great House and on the presentation of its interior furnishings and artefacts.
The same cannot be said of the small brochure or the oral presentation of the guided tour. The house 'history' presented, although fully detailed, is riddled with inaccuracy and hearsay. At best it might be described as an ill-conceived and ill-informed entertainment for an uncritical audience; at worst it is an exercise in salacious titillation which has more in common with the Victorian 'penny dreadful' genre of cheap fiction or the modern tabloid press.
The site promotes none of the characteristics of the 'national monument' it claims to be; lamentably bereft of reality, the interpretation neither informs nor educates and makes no attempt to illuminate enquiry, knowledge and understanding of island history for all. With archive material available and accessible there is no excuse to perpetuate a shoddy tale as fact.
Rendition of a maudlin country and western song, next to an unmarked tomb at the end of the tour, was a final travesty. My father, born in Lucea in 1913 and who inspired my interest in Jamaican history, whilst able to admire the reconstruction of the ruin he knew in his youth was appalled by the whole episode. It is a pity that the sentiments of G.S. Yates, in The Gleaner article before reconstruction began, have been quite overlooked.
I am, etc.,
P. DICKSON
pieter@pieterdickson.idps.co.uk
43, Cuckfield Road
Hurstpierpoint
West Sussex BN6
