Writ­ing about 19th cen­tu­ry Port-of-Spain, the his­to­ri­an Suzanne Good­e­nough quotes the words of colo­nial town plan­ners from 1871 de­scrib­ing the ex­pan­sion of Port-of-Spain and the first glimpses of hous­ing on Wood­brook Es­tate.

“The town [Port-of-Spain] is not hap­pi­ly sit­u­at­ed for ex­ten­sion hemmed in by Queen’s Park (Sa­van­nah) and the Bay, all of which space is oc­cu­pied though much less close­ly built on than it might be, abut­ting on­to the malar­i­ous swamps to the east its on­ly di­rec­tion is west­ward be­yond Rich­mond Street, along with St James and Tra­garete Roads and north-east up the Laven­tille spurs and to­wards Bel­mont. New Town is fill­ing in well and a row of cot­tages now shows across the Tra­garete Road on the Wood­brook Es­tate”

On No­vem­ber 1, 2021, a fa­mous square mile in our lo­cal na­tion­al sto­ry—Wood­brook—cel­e­brat­ed its 110th birth­day and the an­niver­sary of its pur­chase by the Town Board from the Siegert fam­i­ly.

What to­day is of­ten most well known as the lim­ing cap­i­tal of Port-of-Spain and the an­nu­al heart of the Car­ni­val arts has seen many changes in that cen­tu­ry and more of life. From its ori­gins as a sug­ar plan­ta­tion to its de­vel­op­ment for hous­ing, and from a place of colo­nial val­ues to one of more na­tion­al­is­tic ones, to its role in the car­ni­val and the­atre arts, and the im­pact of its church­es, schools, and sport­ing venues on the lives of its res­i­dents—Wood­brook has a lot of dif­fer­ent sto­ries to tell.

To com­mem­o­rate this life­time, the Wood­brook Res­i­dents Com­mit­tee (WRC) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go is putting the fi­nal touch­es on a cof­fee ta­ble book about the so­cial his­to­ry of the sub­urb. Grow­ing Up Wood­brook - A Ta­pes­try of Then and Now re­flects on the dif­fer­ent cul­tures, peo­ple, and his­to­ries who came to live, mix, and adapt to each oth­er in this one square mile, and who in many dif­fer­ent fields made a big im­pact on the na­tion for an area so small.

For the book to sing the out­comes of these events and the lives who made them the book is more about the liv­ing his­to­ry of the Wood­brook com­mu­ni­ty, than an aca­d­e­m­ic tome. The WRC—whose mem­bers in­clude Lynette Dol­ly, Grace Tal­ma Wendy Sealy, Petal-Dawn Hink­son, Kath­leen Git­tens, Rhon­da Wil­son, Ronald Chucka­ree, Miguel Browne, and Ray Hol­man—has spent al­most ten years on the project ap­ply­ing its hive mind to the col­lec­tion of da­ta; in the main first-per­son rec­ol­lec­tions from across eras.

In the best Trin­bag­on­ian fash­ion, they have com­bined their con­tacts and mem­o­ries to col­lect sto­ries and tales from cur­rent and for­mer res­i­dents. These per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions span back to the 1880s and 90s, with some fam­i­lies able to pro­vide hand­ed-down sto­ries and doc­u­men­ta­tion from these ear­ly times. The meat of the rec­ol­lec­tions and sto­ries cov­ers the pe­ri­od 1930s to the 1970s. But we al­so have con­tent and re­flec­tions up to the present time too. Where there have been gaps still to be filled in the sto­ry the Wood­brook Res­i­dents Com­mit­tee has reached out fur­ther and col­lect­ed even more sto­ries to fill those gaps. The book al­so us­es ma­te­ri­als from his­tor­i­cal archives, pub­lished books, and lo­cal news­pa­pers. In ad­di­tion to the in­vit­ed rec­ol­lec­tions and fam­i­ly sto­ries and his­to­ries, video in­ter­views and oral his­to­ries with a se­lec­tion of sons and daugh­ters of Wood­brook have al­so been col­lect­ed, as well as pho­tos. If all these sto­ries have a com­mon feel­ing run­ning through them it is the af­fec­tion the sto­ry­teller holds for Wood­brook.

While the Wood­brook sto­ry is one of mix­ture and change, it is al­so the in­di­vid­ual sto­ries of how the en­vi­ron­ment of a place pro­duced many who have been cen­tral to the sto­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go it­self. Some were lo­cal to Wood­brook for a short time, some for their whole life. These in­clude Beryl McBurnie, Er­ic Williams, George Cham­bers, Capt. Cipri­ani, Mar­i­on O’Callaghan, Nor­man Tang, V.S. and Shi­va Naipaul, No­ble Dou­glas, Rudranath Capildeo, George Bai­ley, Au­drey Jef­fers, Carlisle Chang, Pat Bish­op, John Bud­dy Williams, William G De­mas, Han­nah Janoura, Clive Pan­tin, Clau­dia Jones, An­dre Tanker, El­lie Manette, Ray Hol­man, and many more who you will meet in the book.

In terms of re­sources and ameni­ties, Wood­brook has been for­tu­nate through­out its life­time. This too had a great im­pact on the lives of res­i­dents. How­ev­er, over the last 20 years, Wood­brook has seen the growth of com­mer­cial­iza­tion and a de­cline in res­i­dents. While many of its pret­ty gin­ger­bread hous­es have long gone, some re­main. Nonethe­less, the res­i­dent com­mu­ni­ty is still full of fond­ness and mem­o­ries. Yes, new ideas are need­ed to take Wood­brook for­ward for an­oth­er 110 years. Such as the pos­si­bil­i­ties for sus­tain­able her­itage tourism and a way to make the mem­o­ries and his­to­ry of the com­mu­ni­ty live on for oth­er gen­er­a­tions. Per­haps there is a sus­tain­able her­itage tourism idea here to be re­pro­duced or fol­lowed in rel­a­tive ways for oth­er his­toric com­mu­ni­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go too?

Grow­ing Up Wood­brook - A Ta­pes­try of Then and Now un­folds across 12 chap­ters. These in­clude sto­ries of mi­gra­tion; the role of women in Wood­brook; short so­ci­ol­o­gy of the area; the gold­en era of Car­ni­val; her­itage tourism and the cre­ative in­dus­tries; sport­ing life in Wood­brook; and our last two chap­ters a liv­ing mem­o­ry of Wood­brook from the words of many cur­rent and for­mer res­i­dents, and a fi­nal he­roes gallery of many out­stand­ing Wood­brook res­i­dents who con­tributed to the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

If on­ly the plan­ners writ­ing in 1871 could have seen what Wood­brook was go­ing to be­come. No fear, you can read about it for your­self ear­ly next year when Grow­ing Up Wood­brook - A Ta­pes­try of Then and Now hits book­stores.