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: 5th October 2023 28th August 2023 29th July 2023 21st May 2023 25th April 2023 14th March 2023 22nd January 2023 26th November 2022 28th October 2022 21st September 2022 24th August 2022 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

5th October 2023

Read about Captain Robert Wright, who fought (and won) a duel with Lieutenant Stephen Young at Chubb’s Spring in 1809 and was subsequently acquitted of murder.

We’ve updated our page Communications to reflect the improvements in Internet access on St Helena with effect from 1st October.

Batchelors Hall is a large, prominent building in Main Street, Jamestown. If you’ve never heard of it see our page Historic Buildings, Jamestown.

Our page Sounds of St Helena now contains links whereby you can ‘Listen Live’ to our island radio stations.

Abercrombie & Kent are famous for high-end travel and next year one of their trips includes St Helena. See the article on our page Visitor Information.

The 2024 The Governor’s Cup race has been announced, starting on 26th December 2024.

We’ve greatly improved the Image Search - it now returns more and more relevant results. Good if you know you saw an image on Saint Helena Island Info and can’t remember where. Images returned must have a height of at least 500 px.

28th August 2023

We’ve added a new page describing what we do about Recycling.

There’s a new page Jamestown (district), and another new page Districts of St Helena which talks about the common issues in the eight Districts of St Helena, including their history and development (there were originally only five…).

UK newspaper The Sun has kindly contributed another of its exaggerated articles about St Helena to our page Do they mean us?.

Not all our road signs are correctly spelt (Flag Staff View for example, and Sister’s Walk) but ‘Seales’ Corner’, strange though it looks, is. See our page Place Names.

Doctors coming here to work should read our list of confusing local medical phrases, on our page Speak Saint.

Maybe check out The Real Seven Wonders of St Helena?

If you don’t get enough spam emails yourself you may be amused to read some of ours, on our page Contact Us.

We’ve made further changes to support very narrow screens. In testing we actually got a readable result on a 300px-wide screen, but we still recommend a minimum usable viewing width of 600 pixels.

29th July 2023

The New Bridge isn’t! It’s at the top (Southern end) of Jamestown and what we know about it is on our page Place Names.

We asked Artificial Intelligence to write us a page about St Helena. The resuot is on ournew page Artificial Intelligence.

We’ve added the Rose & Crown Group to our page Glossary.

St Helena has had its first snake! Learn about it on our page Island Nature.

What is the Definitive Island History? We discuss this on our page Historians of St Helena.

Jamestown’s climate is warmer and drier than the island norms, which is now illustrated on the page Jamestown.

After extensive testing the recommended minimum usable viewing width has been reduced from 720 pixels to 600 pixels. (We have actually tested down to 300px but at lower widths layout is not optimal and some left-to-right scrolling is necessary.) If your viewing width is 600 pixels or below some cool features will be disabled to save space.

21st May 2023

The 2023 Wirebird Census results are now on our page The Wirebird.

A National Song, but also a National Hymn? Indeed! Since 1952 St Helena has had its own hymn. It was sung at the island service for the Coronation of King Charles III on 7th May. We discuss it on our page National Song.

There were two successive ships that served St Helena, both called the RMS St Helena, which can cause confusion. Having them both on the same page did not help! So now we have two pages: RMS St Helena (1990-2018) and a new page RMS St Helena (1978-1990). We’ve also sorted out the names applied throughout the site: when it is clear to which ship we are referring we simply use the term ‘RMS’; in other cases we use RMS St Helena (1978-1990) or RMS St Helena (1990-2018).

Guano is a rich source of cheap fertiliser which used to be collected and used here, but no longer is. Read about it on our page Seabirds.

We report the recent arrival of the largest aircraft (to date) to land at St Helena Airport on our page Fly here.

There was some dispute over who drew the early map of Jamestown (below) and when, but in ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{2} #6, Autumn 1992, it is attributed: John Thornton (1667-1705), one of the best-known Chartmakers of the later 17th Century, was Hydrorapher to The East India Company, and published an Atlas Maritimes c. 1700, from which this was probably taken. and ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{2} is written by historians and that’s good enough for us!☺

25th April 2023

Our new page discusses the possibility that Cannabis might become St Helena’s next industry.

We’ve expanded the small section on Religion on St Helena to a full page, with much more detail. See it at Religion.

We also have a new Community page for the Museum of St Helena.

We’ve provided a potted history of St Helena’s progress towards an electrical distribution network on our page Renewable Energy.

In 1971 Life magazine published a treasure hunt leading to a case of whisky, supposedly buried on St Helena. Read more on our page Zzyzx.

We have another in our series on Edible Wild Plants: Pig Weed (Amaranthus Blitum), and this also features a brief mention of Lemon Grass.

14th March 2023

The St Helena Ice Cream recipe may be the easiest ice cream you will ever make! It tastes like rich vanilla ice cream and there is no need for an ice cream maker… See it on our page Fishcakes, and other food.

We have included information about the ancestors of our Wirebird.

We have added more information about Dr. Ian Shine, who introduced equal treatment for Saints in health in the 1960s.

There is more information about the Art & Crafts Association.

22nd January 2023

In a physically isolated and largely closed population health issues will develop. We discuss these on our new page Health Issues.

At Christmas various groups can be heard singing carols in Jamestown, usually outside the Tourist Information Office. You can hear Harford School on our pages Christmas and Sounds of St Helena.

Talking of our page Christmas, some say it should be called ‘Holidays’. We discuss our reasoning on the new page Happy Holidays!.

After being postponed twice due to Covid‑19, The Governor’s Cup was finally run and we have the results.

We’ve added more information about Jonathan’s Birthday.

26th November 2022

There’s a new article about the Millennium Forest on our page The Millennium Forest.

Can I become a Saint? We discuss this on our page Saints, based on our latest understanding.

We have added the sound of the Scouts’ Band to our page Holidays and other festivals - one of the Sounds of St Helena.

We do not expect to need to update our page Covid‑19 further, so have altered its subject groups, removing it from Activity and adding it to History.

28th October 2022

We’re proud of the fact that Saint Helena Island Info is Made in St Helena! - most of the copycats aren’t.

We’ve reorganised our Historic Buildings pages. Historic Buildings is now an introduction to the subject and contains common material. The featured buildings are described on our pages Historic Buildings, Jamestown and Historic Buildings, Country. Our page Historic Buildings, Jamestown also now describes Broadway House and The Consulate Hotel.

Ian Bruce’s latest article (prepared jointly with the editor of this website) investigates whether Goldfish really 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 it on our page Industries.

We’ve split our shopping pages: What to buy discusses specifically souvenir shopping, and Shopping on St Helena talks about shopping generally (which is not like you might expect…) We’ve also improved both pages.

Our page Subject Index was taking too long to load because of the size of the index, so now it works differently and much more quickly - give it a try.

We have another in our series on Edible Wild Plants: Monkey Ears (‘gotu kola’).

The Art & Crafts Association now has its own Community page.

And finally, if you would like to support Saint Helena Island Info please see the ‘Buy Us a Coffee’ link at the bottom of every page (more on our page About This Site). There is absolutely no obligation to contribute but anything you can spare would be welcome.

21st September 2022

We have, of course, updated many aspects of the site to record the transition of the monarchy from the late HRH Queen Elizabeth II to her son HRH King Charles III. Furthermore, we had to redesign our page Heads of State - it previously showed the main St Helena events that happened during each reign but Queen Elizabeth II reigned for so long it became ridiculous so now we just link to them.

Michael Binyon’s article in The Times (UK) about the reburial of the ‘Liberated Africans’ is reproduced on our pages Read articles about St Helena and The Slave Graves.

We’ve added a tribute to the island’s longest-running Rock Band, The Big Easy on our page Sounds of St Helena.

We are pleased to include another article by Ian Bruce, this time asking (and answering☺) the question Did João da Nova really discover St Helena. See it and his other articles on our page Historians of St Helena.

Can you help us indentify the old photographs of the Reading Sports?

We took some additional photograps in Castle Gardens and the page has been updated accordingly.

It has been announced that the preferred bidder to take over from Sure as provider of telephone, Internet and Television services is Maestro Technologies (Maestro). See our page Communications for more.

And finally, if he’s convicted of the charges expected to be laid against him, should former US President Donald Trump be exiled here? It’s been suggested…

24th August 2022

Nick Thorpe died recently and has been added to our page Important People.

The reburial of the ‘Liberated Africans’ uncovered during the Airport project created enough new material for this subject to get a page of its own: The Slave Graves.

We have added lots more nicknames to our page Nicknames but there are still plenty of puzzles - can you help us explain any of them?

We have another in our series on Edible Wild Plants.

The island’s first case of Covid‑19 was identified within the community on 16th August.

New Governor Nigel Phillips was sworn in on 13th August 2022, stating I am in no doubt that it is the people who live in the three Islands who are best able to judge the path ahead and I look forward to learning from you.

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

27th July 2022

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

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 (continued) 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 page Do they mean us?. 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{3}.

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 page Sounds of St Helena.

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 page Government on St Helena.

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

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 page Government on St Helena.

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 Religion.

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 Cable, as previously thought - it may instead be via the Direct Satellite Link Services.

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 page Lost and almost-lost Buildings 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 page Saved Buildings.

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 page Glossary.

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 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 our page Jamestown, 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; Heads of State; 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 our page Government on St Helena 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 our 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.