Updated This Release

For the record

The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new.{a}

About the most recent updates to Saint Helena Island Info

This site was last updated on 27 November 2023.

See also: ⋅ Page History

Pages by date last updated

These pages have minor updates unless listed in the Recent Updates section below.

Recent Updates

Listed below are the principal changes in each release, in addition to which there are generally new and improved images, corrections and other minor improvements throughout the site.

Below: 27th November 1st November 2023 5th October 2023 28th August 2023 29th July 2023 21st May 2023 Older Items

27th November

We now know where the people recently re-buried in Ruperts originated, before being captured as slaves. See our page The Slave Graves.

Enjoy our new page Fascinating Facts about St Helena!

We tried a different Artificial Intelligence app, this time with rather less success. See our page Artificial Intelligence.

We have taken advantage of the now-available un-capped Internet access to add additional What3Words locations across the site.

1st November 2023

Our National Conservation Areas now have their own page: see National Conservation Areas. Also included is information about our Marine Protected Area.

Beware of the Diddlidite! See our page Edible Wild Plants.

We’ve removed all the (known!) Dead Links and replaced them with alternatives.

There are other updates too numerous to list across many pages, including additional ‘Read More’ articles, factual updates, additional images and new data. Enjoy discovering them☺.

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!☺

Older Items

Older items can be found on our Page Updates History.