The Ins & Outs of Barbados 2022

135 Good Health Hotel, the Atlantis in Tent Bay, Bathsheba, and the Beachmount Hotel on the bluff between Tent Bay and the next Bathsheba bay, where the Bathsheba railway station was located. The Crane Hotel was originally a posh seaside villa called Marine House. Mr. D.M. Simpson, famous and successful engineer and grandfather of Sir Kyffin Simpson, bought Marine House in 1887 (hence the centre piece - the 1887 bar today) and created the famous Crane Hotel. He expanded the house for additional rooms, while a dance hall and restaurant were later added (known as the Casino) overlooking the cliff, and rivalling the Marine Hotel, as THE place to go. The emphasis at the Crane was always on the beach, the sea bathing and the healthy environment. Its praises were sung eloquently by one guest, Raymond Savage, who wrote a book simply called Barbados. He said, after a few days at the Crane: “A week or two of this programme (sea bathing, sun bathing, walking, relaxing, indulging in iced egg nog and rum sours, and eating healthy food (especially the /crane chubb) will restore the most jaded to a measure of health and strength which is quite remarkable.“ Other hotels were opened in Bathsheba (the Powell Spring and the Edgewater. The Edgewater was allegedly started by a lady to compete with her former husband running the Powell Spring, but after its heyday in the 1960s it is sadly now derelict. Any buyers? The Kingsley Club in Cattlewash, a family hotel, was a great favourite, always full and much sought after by recuperating invalids and parents whose children had asthma. It too is no more. Similarly, the bay houses along the Cattlewash coast are in demand as permanent homes for retirees with health problems, for their alleged ozone laden breezes and health benefits. The hotels in the early twentieth century boasted about their healthy environment and facilities – the breezes, the sea (“a perfect temperature, even for the invalid”) and the wonderful tap water all featured in their advertisements. With modern mass tourism, beginning in the 50s and 60s, huge airliners and package tourists, the sun, sand and sea theme – beaches and bikinis – took over. The touting of the healthy environment disappeared from the ads – it was all about the three Ss. Is it time to reassert the health benefits of our “Paradise with everything”? Not just the sun, sand and sea, but the wonderful cooling Atlantic breezes, the perfect temperatures, the safety, the wonderful drinks and healthy local foods? Our tourism slogan or tagline could well be: “Barbados – the healthy Paradise”. Another major aspect of health, of course, is health care, and considering that millions of patients travel from the west to India, Singapore and other eastern countries for health care, Barbados would attract many, many patients fromNorthAmerica ifwehada truly state-of-the-art modern hospital – a Mayo Clinic of the Caribbean – with so many comfortable hotels to recuperate in! For a more detailed account of early tourism in Barbados when health was the by word, see the splendid book Island in the Sun - the Story of Tourism in Barbados, by Henry Fraser and Kerry Hall, published by Miller Publishing, available at the Barbados Museum shop and other booksellers.