Rose Hall Great House
Georgian plantation great house of the 1770s above Montego Bay, shown on day and evening tours.
Rose Hall stands on a rise above the coast east of Montego Bay, at the centre of what was once a sugar estate of several thousand acres worked by enslaved people. The Georgian house was completed in the 1770s for John Palmer, a planter and custos of Saint James, and is built of cut stone with a double staircase to a first-floor entrance and jalousied windows on the upper storeys. It was left derelict after the collapse of the sugar economy and was restored in the 1960s by the American businessman John Rollins.
Interiors are furnished with English and Caribbean antiques, including mahogany pieces, silk wall coverings and period ceramics, and the basement holds a bar and shop. Guides recount the estate's history and the much-embroidered legend of Annie Palmer, the so-called White Witch of Rose Hall, whose story inspired a novel by Herbert de Lisser. Evening tours by lamplight concentrate on that legend. The grounds also contain the ruins of estate outbuildings and views over the coast.
Highlights
- Cut-stone Georgian great house with its double entrance staircase
- Rooms furnished with English and Caribbean antiques
- Guided accounts of the estate and the Annie Palmer legend
- Lamplit evening tours of the house and grounds
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