Blenheim – Birthplace of National Hero – The Rt. Excellent Sir Alexander Bustamante

Blenheim is historically significant not only as the birthplace of Sir Alexander Bustamante, but also as an estate dating back to 1786. By 1884, the year of Bustamante’s birth, it had become a struggling property sustained by modest sugar cane production and cattle rearing.

The estate is therefore renowned mostly for being the birthplace of iconic political figure and fierce advocate of the Jamaican working class, Sir Alexander Bustamante, who was Jamaica’s first Prime Minister, ushering in a new phase of Jamaica’s development—the age of political independence.

The house on the estate is a replica of the one in which Sir Alexander Bustamante was born, the original having been destroyed entirely by a fire. It was based on the information supplied by Sir Alexander and Jimmy Gayle (Gayle had worked as a handyman for Sir Alexander’s father) that the replica of the cottage was designed. Curiously, both men agreed as to the house’s site, but disagreed fundamentally on the house’s features. Gayle, for example, insisted that the original house had two apartments. Sir Alexander recalls four: Bustamante maintained that the windows were wooden opening casements; Gayle, on the other hand, insisted that all the windows were movable jalousies. As a result of these and other differences in descriptions by the two men most capable of describing the original, the replica of Sir Alexander Bustamante’s birthplace is a compromise between the two men’s memories.

Blenheim was declared a national monument on November 5, 1992, by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.