Page Updates History In case anyone needs to know Take back control of huge sums of money, 350 million pounds a week, and spend it on our priorities such as the NHS.{a}

Older items carried over from Page History/Updated This Release

Historic newspaper

The Items

Below: 27th July 2022 25th June 2022 23rd May 2022 24th April 2022 26th March 2022 22nd February 2022 24th January 2022 27th December 2021 29th November 2021 1st November 2021 29th September 2021 8th September 2021 26th August 2021 26th June 2021 31st May 2021 26th April 2021 25th March 2021 23rd February 2021 30th January 2021 26th January 2021

27th July 2022

Could Jonathan help us all live longer? Check our Jonathan the tortoise page.

We’ve split our page Our Newspapers; the page now contains the common and historical information but our two weekly newspapers now have their own pages: The Sentinel & The Independent.

Our page A Brief History had become too large (larger pages take longer to load) so we’ve split it: A Brief History contains our history up until the handover to the Crown; A Brief History (cont.) brings it up to date.

25th June 2022

The 2022 Wirebird Census results are now on our page The Wirebird.

We’ve expanded our page Before Discovery including information that suggests St Helena’s presence and possible location were known before it was ‘discovered’ in 1502 by João da Nova.

The Clifford and George Benjamin Arboretums are now included on our page St Pauls. Relatedly, don’t confuse Whitewood with Whiteweed…

The ‘Brick House is a curiosity because it was built with bricks(!) - most local houses are stone (older) or block-built (more recent). There is also a myth associated with it…

Can you help with the Humbers Mystery? If so, please contact us.

We have another in our series on Edible Wild Plants.

Lastly, Governor Rushbrook left the territory on 20th June so we are now able to complete his entry in our table of past governors.

23rd May 2022

We have added a new page which reproduces articles, first published in The Sentinel, about plants that grow wild on St Helena and which are reputed to be good to eat and also sometimes to have properties beneficial to your health. See Edible Wild Plants.

The (UK) Daily Express has kindly contributed a new item for our Do they mean us? page. Enjoy!

Our page Ruperts has been updated with lots of new details, including the suggestion that Ruperts could be linked to Jamestown by a tunnel throught Mundens Hill.

And the flagpole at Signal House has finally been repaired. See it on our page Historic Buildings, Country.

24th April 2022

We’ve again removed some of the older items from our page Read articles about St Helena (Older), transferring the text to the blog Much Older St Helena Stuff. We are aware that this transfer does not include the images; it seems to be a limitation of the Blogger interface. If anycone can tell us about a workaround for this please contact us.

Google™’s API for a site-search still won’t work for us but we’ve found a work-around, so a link again appears in the Navigation section of each page - it just works differently.

The Social Media icon for Facebook™ has been removed because it no longer does anything{1}.

And again we’ve implemented some technical changes to make pages load faster.

26th March 2022

The fountain in Castle Gardens has been make-shift repaired so we were able to capture its splashing, and then it rained heavily in Jamestown so we captured the sound of that too. Both are also on our Sounds of St Helena page.

Ferdie Gunnell has written a piece for ‘The Parliamentarian’ - the magazine of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association - about the recent governmental changes on St Helena. Read it on our Government on St Helena page.

We also have Craig Williams’ article about drone photography on our Photography and Read articles about St Helena pages.

We have removed the Google Translate™ option because it is no longer necessary; when modern browsers detect that a page is not in your home language they automatically offer a Translate option.

We have also removed the Google™ Search facility, but this may be re-instated in the future if we can figure out how to apply Google™’s new technology!

Finally we’ve fixed a few bugs in our Javascript - we hope they didn’t spoil your enjoyment of Saint Helena Island Info.

22nd February 2022

You can read the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s report on the 2021 General ElectionⒾ, which makes 12 recommendations for future operation of elections on St Helena, on our Government on St Helena page.

We have more information on the restored Humber Super Snipe, including the discovery that there were actually two near-identical cars in immediate succession. See our page Classic Cars for more.

Ian Bruce’s article ‘Deceiving Bishop Welby’ talks about the shenanigans in the Church at the turn of the 19th/20th Century, and can be found on our page Churches of St Helena.

Easter Eggs (introduced in October 2019) have been removed - they slowed the site to no useful purpose.

24th January 2022

The future of St Helena’s Internet connectivity may not be the Submarine Fibre Optic Cables, as previously thought - it may instead be via the ‘Starlink’ and/or ‘OneWeb’ systems.

There is some evidence that Goldfish were bred here in the 18th Century, for export to the UK, and may even be the source of all the goldfish in the UK today. Read about what we know so far on our page Industries and contact us if you can help.

27th December 2021

We’ve been investigating the buildings behind The Cannister, which have changed a lot in the last 200 years. What we have learned is reported on our Lost and almost-lost Buildings page but there are still plenty of questions; can you help?

While investigating the buildings behind The Cannister we discovered that the Thorpes D.I.Y. Store at the bottom of Napoleon Street (‘The Emporium’) is itself a Saved Building, albeit some time ago. More on our Saved Buildings page.

It seems Lafitte wasn’t our only French spy. So we’ve created a new part of our page Characters of St Helena: ‘Some Dishonourable Mentions…’ (we may add more categories later).

From 1978 until 2021 local business was supported and encouraged by a succession of government agencies. You can now read about them on our Glossary page.

The restoration of Teutonic Hall by Thorpes is now complete and we’ve updated the information on our page Saved Buildings to reflect this.

We are now satisfied that the Dutch Territorial Stone found at Teutonic Hall and originally thought to relate to St Helena, actually doesn’t, as described now on our page Invasion!.

We’ve changed our page Quotations - the items are now listed in alphabetic order of the person quoted, not by page as previously.

29th November 2021

In the early 19th Century the island faced a labour shortage so hundreds of Chinese were brought here to fill the gap. We talk about this on our new page The Chinese Labourers.

For Remembrance Day this year Nick Stevens published George Edward Scipio a true St Helenian hero, about his Great, Great Uncle who was killed in action during St Helena in World War 1. We have included the story on that page.

We’ve discovered that artist William John Burchell had a sense of humour. See Artists.

We have reported a new theory on where our motto came from. Follow the link to see it. The same also applies to how the Arum Lily became our previous national flower.

The symbol for additional File Data has changed to Ⓘ, which is more intuitively obvious.

1st November 2021

We’ve updated our page Government on St Helena to reflect the results of the General Election held on 13th October - the first for the ‘Ministerial Form of Government’.

As a sign that tourism may be about to re-open after Covid‑19, Tourist Information Office representative Matt Joshua is extensively quoted in a BBC Article about yachties stranded here during the pandemic. It’s reproduced on our page Read articles about St Helena.

Each page that has more than one section has a page index towards the top (‘PAGE SECTIONS: ’). We’ve standardised the location of these and highlighted them to make them easier to use. See our page Important Information for an example.

And again we’ve implemented some technical changes to make pages load faster.

29th September 2021

You might think around 4,500 people don’t need much media, and yet we have (and previously have had) rather a lot. Our many media pages now have an index of their own: Island Media.

Another new page: we’ve split the Jamestown page, moving the history information to a new page Jamestown History.

We’ve added Read More items to various pages: Artists; Blue Hill; Gazetteer; The Castle of Otranto; Royalty; St. Matthew’s Church; A Very Brief History; Island Media; Island Nature and Island Structures.

Our Constitution was revised in 2021. We have updated the page to reflect this.

8th September 2021

We’ve added a new page which talks about Television on St Helena, containing much more detail than we had included previously on our page Communications.

We have added to our Sounds of St Helena collection a recording of the live entertainment at The Standard, recorded by the editor of this website from his home in Napoleon Street.

We’ve updated the Government on St Helena page with the latest news about the election that will introduce the Ministerial Form of Government.

‘The Cable’ has finally landed at St Helena. We have details and photographs{b} on page Communications.

26th August 2021

We have a new island map. It’s quite accurate, as far as we can tell from the small image available.

We’ve updated all the figures quoted from Census Reports to reflect the data in the 2021 Census, including some interesting new anaysis and figures on various pages.

26th June 2021

The takeover of the island’s main fish processing facility by PQ Trading (a.k.a. Saints Tuna Corporation) is recorded on our Fish Processing page.

The Saint Cooks have kindly allowed us to reproduce their ‘Global Saint Community Map’ on our page Saints.

There is also news about the The Historic Environment Record.

31st May 2021

There are details of the rather muted commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon, which were heavily curtailed due to the Covid‑19 pandemic.

You can link to the Historic Environment Database from our page The Historic Environment Record and now you can also download the full Historic Environment Record from the same page.

26th April 2021

We have revised our page Government on St Helena in accordance with the new ‘Ministerial form of Government’, as best we understand it, though as it seems many of the finer details still remain to be worked out this page will remain subject to change. Also please note that the new system does not actually come into force until after the next General Election, expected August 2021.

Why do cars visiting Jamestown go all the way to The Wharf to turn around? See our page Ghost Stories of St Helena to find out.

25th March 2021

We’ve added Yoga to our Sport on St Helena page because we now have qualified local yoga instructors.

There’s an update on the Governance Reform process on our page Government on St Helena and an update on the sell-off of our fishing industry on our page Fish Processing.

23rd February 2021

We have a fascinating new contribution for our Memories page - from a VSO teacher in 1966/7. His experience of St Helena adds an interesting perspective to the other stories. How much of what he says remains true today? See Memories of St Helena.

The 2021 Wirebird Census results show another year of decline in total numbers but there is hope for the future. See The Wirebird.

We have further information on the shape of the Fort of St. John - a painting from 1705 showing no triangular buildings.

Just when we thought nobody was writing Blogs anymore a new one arrives! See Blogs.

There’s an interesting new video about Jonathan, on his page.

We’ve improved the way the annual-events data is presented on our pages On This Day, In This Week, In This Month and This Year.

You can see and download the island’s official tourist map for 2021 from our page Maps of St Helena.

All current dates & times on this site are now displayed as St Helena time (GMT). This means you are seeing St Helena as it actually is; as if you are here. Depending on where you are in the world, at certain times of (your) day your date may be different from St Helena’s. This is intentional.

The alerts for people who don’t activate Javascript have been removed. Nobody these days turns off Javascript - in most modern browsers it isn’t even possible. If you do turn off Javascript the site simply won’t work properly, but then neither will most others…

There is a fascinating article about the history and origins of our place names on our page Place Names.

30th January 2021

This is a technical update that fixes a few minor issues with the previous release.

26th January 2021

Was the original Fort of St. John really triangular, as it is usually drawn? Maybe not. See What shape was the fort, and where exactly was it?.

We know why The Cannister (the building at the top of Main Street which houses the Tourist Information Office and the Art & Crafts Association), is spelt with a double-n. See our page Glossary.

We have two new pages. You can learn more about how St Helena is seen on Social Media on our new page Social Media. There is also now a calendar, featuring the facts and events of the current year, on our new page This Year.

Lastly, there are lots of technical changes that should make pages load faster on a slower Internet connection.

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