Flattened by a Hurricane in 1712 and an Earthquake in 1907: The Spanish Town Cathedral That Keeps Being Rebuilt on the Same Foundations

• The Archbishop of Canterbury’s planned visit to the cathedral during the diocese’s bicentenary was scratched
• The Anglican church was built in 1666 on Spanish foundations, reusing much of the old material
• It was rebuilt after a 1712 hurricane and restored after the 1907 earthquake
• It is the first Anglican cathedral outside England and the oldest in the former British colonies

Justin Welby, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was due to visit the Cathedral of St Jago de la Vega in Spanish Town during his stay in Jamaica from July 18 to 21, 2024, for the 200th anniversary of the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. That item was dropped from his itinerary, the Sunday Gleaner reported, but the paper used the moment to retell the story of a building that has been destroyed and rebuilt again and again on the same patch of ground.

Its origins go back to about 1525, when a church was built on the site of the Spanish Chapel of the Red Cross. After the English invasion of 1655, the Catholic cathedral was destroyed and replaced by an Anglican church, built in 1666 on the original foundations and with much of the old material. A hurricane destroyed it in 1712; it was rebuilt in 1714, which makes the present church 310 years old. It became the cathedral of the Jamaican diocese on November 28, 1843, later fell into disrepair, was restored in 1901, was destroyed by the 1907 earthquake and was restored again in 1908.

The result is two buildings joined at the transepts and the chancel, a cruciform church on a Spanish foundation that mixes round-headed and pointed arches, classical quoins and medieval buttresses. The tower, added in 1817, carries one of the few steeples in the Caribbean. Inside, the decorated plaster ceiling and panelling were replaced in the 1840s by a dark-stained planked roof, and memorial slabs once set in the floor gave way to English glazed tiles. The cathedral holds marble monuments to governors, including three of the 12 pieces sculptor John Bacon produced for Jamaica, and its baptismal and marriage registers date to 1668.

The cathedral describes itself as a teacher “unravelling a history of the tradition and legacy of worship” and as “the seat of spiritual comfort” that opens its doors for weekly services and outreach. After Fort Charles in Port Royal, it is the oldest English foundation in Jamaica.

For property owners, the cathedral is a case study in how a site outlives any one structure. Its builders reused foundations and materials, rebuilt after wind and earthquake, and changed ceilings and floors as tastes and budgets shifted, yet the building’s value has grown with each layer. Owners of Jamaica’s older homes and church buildings face the same choices on a smaller scale: whether to restore or replace, and how to keep a structure standing through the next storm. The cathedral’s record suggests that repairing what is sound, and documenting what changes, is how old buildings become heritage rather than rubble.

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