| Administrative History | The plantation at Turners Hall, in the parish of St Andrew, Barbados was bequeathed in 1746 by Elizabeth Alleyne, the widow of Colonel Abel Alleyne, to her neice, Mary Fitzherbert (c1721-1753), eldest daughter of Littleton Poyntz Meynell of Bradley and wife of William FitzHerbert (1712-1772). Members of the Alleyne family remained involved with the estate and appear to have acted as attorneys on behalf of the FitzHerberts.
The FitzHerbert family acquired lands in Jamaica through the marriage of Sir William FitzHerbert (1748-1791) to Sarah Perrin, daughter of William Perrin of Westminster (d 1759). William Perrin made his fortune as a merchant at Kingston in the first decades of the 18th century. He probably acquired most of his plantations through foreclosures of loans which would explain why they were scattered about the island. In 1740 he published ‘The Present State of the British and French Sugar Colonies’, a contribution to the controversy going on at the time over trade policy and the British West Indies.
On William Perrin's death in 1759, his estates were inherited by his son, William Philp Perrin (1742-1820). This included five Jamaican plantations - Retrieve, Vere (also known as Perrin), Forrest, Blue Mountain, and Grange Hall - with about 600 enslaved people, yielding about £5000 p.a., and worth about £60,000. This was a large fortune even by Jamaican standards. William Philp Perrin seems never to have been to the Caribbean to see his properties, probably because of his chronic ill health. Of the five plantations Forrest was sold c1769, probably because it was so widely separated from the others, and Retrieve - a small coffee estate with some uneconomic gold deposits - was rented out.
William Philp Perrin bequeathed his estates to his mother, and sister Sarah, but both predeceased him. It was therefore Sarah's husband, Sir William Fitzherbert, who inherited the plantations. |