An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

St Clair has long been known as the finest re­al es­tate in the is­land. In a re­cent­ly by­gone era of colo­nial­ism it was the pre­serve ex­clu­sive­ly of the up­per­crust of the rul­ing class­es where el­e­gant man­sions were set in ex­ten­sive grounds. To­day, many of those fine homes still ex­ist, but some have been turned in­to of­fice space, par­tic­u­lar­ly for gov­ern­ment min­istries.

St Clair was de­vel­oped as a sug­ar es­tate, as part of the Peschi­er fam­i­ly hold­ings in the late 18th cen­tu­ry. When the Peschiers sold off what was lat­er to be­come Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in 1817, St Clair was re­tained. By 1876 the canes had giv­en way to pas­ture and the gov­ern­ment vet­eri­nary of­fi­cer, Mr J B White, clam­oured for the for­ma­tion of a stock farm and breed­ing sta­tion which would raise cat­tle to sup­ply a de­cent qual­i­ty of milk for pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions like hos­pi­tals and asy­lums while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly im­prov­ing the ge­net­ic stock of the cat­tle in Trinidad.

Sub­se­quent­ly in 1879, the stock farm was in­au­gu­rat­ed with two head of cat­tle be­ing the ini­tial herd. Grad­u­al­ly, the aims and ob­jec­tives of the farm were re­alised since not on­ly did the herds pro­duce milk, but al­so dis­sem­i­nat­ed su­pe­ri­or breed­ers to the small cat­tle own­ers of the is­land. At the end of every year, a grand auc­tion was held where­in some of the an­i­mals were dis­posed of. In 1885, J H Col­lens raved about the good work of the farm:

"Mr White has not on­ly a prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of farm­ing, but he is al­so an ex­pe­ri­enced vet­eri­nary sur­geon, and the nat­ur­al con­se­quence is that the cat­tle are in prime con­di­tion, while the milk is ex­cep­tion­al­ly rich and pure. For these pur­pos­es, the short­horn from Eng­land and the large va­ri­ety of the ze­bu from In­dia have been in­tro­duced, the last named with marked suc­cess and val­ue to the colony.

At the end of De­cem­ber, 1885, the stock com­prised 220 cows, 16 ze­bu (Bos In­di­cus), and four In­di­an buf­fa­los (Bos Bubalus)–to­tal, 240. With­in the last year a stal­lion of the Nor­folk Hack­ney breed has been added to the es­tab­lish­ment."

The su­per­in­ten­dent of the stock farm al­so had ju­ris­dic­tion over the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah as far as its use as a pas­ture was con­cerned. A large num­ber of Madras­si milk-sell­ers had set­tled in what is now Boissiere Vil­lage and St James and they kept a fair num­ber of cows. These an­i­mals were al­lowed to for­age in the Sa­van­nah at the cost of one dol­lar per month. In at least one fun­ny in­ci­dent, a strolling pair of lovers were put to sud­den flight when they were charged by an an­gry bull.

The colo­nial gov­ern­ment ac­quired Val­sayn es­tate from the Guisep­pi fam­i­ly in 1899 and by 1901, all the cat­tle had been trans­ferred un­der the man­age­ment of C W Mead­en, Mr White's suc­ces­sor. The St Joseph farm as it be­came known was lat­er vest­ed in the Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege of Trop­i­cal Agri­cul­ture at St Au­gus­tine in 1924 and still sur­vives as the UWI Field Sta­tion. With no more cows, the pas­tures at St Clair were laid out in res­i­den­tial lots from around 1898 be­com­ing the place it is to­day.

While the place was still a home for cat­tle, how­ev­er, in 1878, a pow­er­ful man by the name of Alexan­der Gray owned the es­tate. He con­struct­ed a mag­nif­i­cent res­i­dence for his fam­i­ly called Sweet­bri­ar House. Gray had such au­thor­i­ty, that his was one of the few homes be­ing sup­plied with piped wa­ter di­rect­ly from the Mar­aval Reser­voir, for which he paid no wa­ter rates.

In 1884, the colo­nial gov­ern­ment pur­chased all the land with the ex­cep­tion of Sweet­bri­ar House, and laid out St Clair Ave with leas­es of 199 years for lots at a pep­per­corn rent. This was the gen­e­sis of St Clair as a fash­ion­able up­per crust sub­urb.

In 1903, George Bushe (whose fa­ther, John Scott Bushe had been a Colo­nial Sec­re­tary un­til his death in 1887 and lies buried in the Botan­i­cal Gar­dens) bought Sweet­bri­ar House from Alexan­der Gray and re­mod­elled it for the open­ing of the ex­clu­sive and posh St Clair Club. This soon be­came the snooty pre­cur­sor to the Coun­try Club, and was the place where the cream of so­ci­ety met to quaff cock­tails and be wait­ed up­on by im­mac­u­late­ly uni­formed ser­vants.

George Bushe died in 1910, and his moi­ety in the prop­er­ty was leased by a con­sor­tium of mem­bers of the St Clair Club. The lease on the land was sold to Tatil in 1969 who prompt­ly de­mol­ished the house. In 1975, the Tatil sky­scraper was erect­ed on the spot, oblit­er­at­ing all mem­o­ry of Sweet­bri­ar House and the St Clair Club.