WHILE ANTHONY Porter's Bricks and Stones From The Past, Jamaica's Geological Heritage is an academically oriented text, Porter includes some interesting and sometimes a bit off-the-wall historical facts. Popping up in his discourse on the bricks and stones, they serve to add a certain life to the text.

The facts are not earth-shattering and new; nor are they forced into the text in a ham-fisted attempt to lighten a weighty tome. Instead, they simply flow naturally into Porter's detailed examination of Jamaica's history from his particular perspective as an exploration geologist.

Earthquake

So, in the section on 'Port Royal, Its Geologic Heritage', under 'The Coastline', Porter writes that "Another little-known and insufficiently appreciated feature of Port Royal is the extensive tract of land that has been built up by deposition since the great earthquake of 1692.

"At the time of the earthquake the town occupied an area of about 60 acres (24 hectares), but much of this sank, leaving only about 25 acres (10 hectares) of dry surface area. One of the consequences of this was the further isolation of the Port Royal cay, as a large gap of shallow water (several hundred metres wide) separated the surviving town from the rest of the Palisadoes spit.

"With the passage of time, the gap slowly began to fill by the natural deposition of sand and gravel, but this process was aided by the residents of Port Royal, who sank old naval vessels and boats loaded with stones to speed up the process of accretion."

That should be food for thought for those who like to trek over to the once wickedest city on earth for fish. And Porter further reminds us that "It was not until 1936 that a road leading to the airport and lighthouse was finally opened."

Farewell

Then in 'Fort Augusta Revisited', in 'Fort Augusta since 1900', Porter writes "What is not widely known, however, is that during an eight-month period between 1915 and 1916 a feature film, The Daughter of the Gods, starring Annette Kellerman, was shot in Jamaica by Fox Film Corporation and one of the main locations was Fort Augusta. In bidding farewell to the people of Jamaica in April 1916, Mr Herbert Brenon, the director, remarked, 'It has been my duty to handle many thousands some days at Fort Augusta, so all told I have handled close to 150,000. This is no exaggeration when one thinks of the many days I had 3,000 at a time. To these men I send a message of thanks.'

"Unfortunately, this ten-reel black-and-white film from the silent-era days is lost, since no copy is known to exist, although one reel is is believed to be present in a Russian archive. The movie is said to have cost about US$1 million to produce, and the studio head, William Fox, was allegedly so incensed that he removed Brenon's name from the list of credits, but Brenon sued and won."

And we thought that the drama around Fort Augusta is only the activities of the female prisoners there.

Then, coming up the end of Bricks and Stones, Porter specifies the origins of a University of the West Indies (UWI) and Jamaican landmark, the University Chapel. The story is generally well known, but his detailing makes a difference.

Sugar industry

"With the expansion of the sugar industry still in full swing in Trelawny, construction of a boiler house and other buildings was about to commence at Gales Valley, situated just over 4.5 miles (7.5 kilometres) east-southeast of the Orange Valley sugar factory. In 1955, the old boiler house was donated by the owners of Hampden Estate to Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, who was then Chancellor of the UWI. She arranged for it to be dismantled, block by block, under the supervision of the late A.D. Scott.

"Each building stone was meticulously numbered, then transported by road to the Mona campus of the UWI and reassembled. It took three years to complete the task of reconstruction, and when it was done this beautiful Georgian building, made with finely dressed limestone from the parish of Trelawny, was reborn as the University Chapel. An interesting architectural feature not highlighted in brochures is the prominent row of dentils below the eaves. And immediately below the dentils on the northern side of the chapel are the largest date stones, clearly marked 1799."