“The Fact That You Are a Church Does Not Make It Right”: A Savanna-la-Mar Teacher Says a Church’s New Land Has Cost Her Family Their Sleep

• A church moved to land it bought on Barclays Street, Savanna-la-Mar, in November 2023
• A teacher living across the road says late-night services have made life “a living hell”
• About 150 congregants met under a big tent during a two-week convocation
• Repeated reports to the police brought only brief relief, she says

A Westmoreland teacher says a church’s move on to the land opposite her home has turned her household upside down. The Sacred Heart Spiritual Church of Jesus Christ relocated to Barclays Street in Savanna-la-Mar in November, the Gleaner reported on January 4, 2024, and began holding services under a big tent on lands it had bought across from the house where Shermaine Hartley-Drummond lives.

“Since November 5, when this Pocomania church decided to have a two-week convocation, my life and that of my family has become a living hell,” she told the newspaper. Hartley-Drummond, herself a Christian, has lived at the address for five years and shares the home with her 75-year-old mother, a cancer patient. She said the preaching and the thumping music had cost them several nights of sleep and could be felt through the house. “There are three other churches on this street, and this has never been a problem,” she said.

She said she made numerous complaints to the police. After the first night, when the service went on until 2:00 a.m., she could not go to work the next day. A police team turned up after five calls, but the music went back up when they left. She wrote to the senior superintendent for Westmoreland, Wayne Josephs, and recorded the services from inside her home as proof. Relief came only in the final two days of the convention, she said, after police telephoned the pastor and threatened to stop the service. “It is unacceptable. The fact that you are a church does not make it right,” a well-placed source told the Gleaner, as others claimed the church was well connected.

The tent came down after the convention but returned for a watch night service, which ran until 2:00 a.m. on New Year’s night, with members chatting until 3:00 a.m.; she did not complain that night. By the following Tuesday, loud drumming could again be heard in her home. She said the church no longer needs a permit to operate on its own property, but owes residents peace. When she went to talk to members, she said, they cursed her and told her she could not stop God. Calls to the church’s music pastor and to Josephs went unanswered.

For anyone buying or renting a home in Jamaica, the dispute is a reminder that what happens on the next lot can matter as much as the house itself. A church buying land on a residential street is ordinary, and places of worship are often good neighbours, but a new use can change a street’s character overnight. Buyers are wise to ask who owns the surrounding parcels and what they are used for, and congregations acquiring land do well to settle hours and sound levels with neighbours before the first service. As this case shows, waiting for the Noise Abatement Act to be enforced can be a long wait.

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