Flamstead

The only remains of the great house at Flamstead is an old chimney. Flamstead was used as a lookout point as far back as the Taino period and during the Napoleonic Wars, served as a residence for Admiral Rodney, and was used as a base for the British army. Former Jamaican trade ambassador Peter King built a house on the site before being murdered in 2006. A plaque on the house he built notes that the site helped prove the usefulness of longitude as first measured by John Harrison’s marine chronometer in 1761 by Harrison’s son William. The Harrisons would eventually take the 20,000-pound sterling prize offered by the British crown for a solution to the problem of measuring longitude in the age of sail.