Edinburgh Castle

OVERVIEW

A two-storey stone house with round loopholed towers at opposite corners, built around 1770 in the hills of the Pedro district by Lewis Hutchinson, a Scot who had arrived in the 1760s. For miles it was the only house on the road between Saint Ann's Bay and the south, and travellers stopped there. Hutchinson shot them from his towers, for sport, and had the bodies thrown into a sinkhole on the estate that is still called Hutchinson's Hole. He was tried and hanged in Spanish Town on 16 March 1773. The house is a ruin, listed by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.

HISTORY

In 1895 Governor Sir Henry Blake had himself lowered into Hutchinson's Hole; no remains were found. The number of victims was never established.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Local tradition holds that the ghosts of Hutchinson's victims walk the estate, and residents warn visitors away from the ruin after dark. The tradition is recorded in Jamaican travel and heritage writing; there is no investigation on record. The documented history — the killings, the sinkhole, the hanging — is not in dispute and is the reason the site is here.

VISITING

Off the Bensonton–Claremont road in the interior of St Ann. The ruin is unattended and the sinkhole is unfenced — do not approach the hole.