Built in or before 1699, the Old Rectory on Broad Alley is one of the oldest houses in St George’s. The lot was granted to Captain George Dew in 1700 in consideration of the great cost he had laid out in purchasing a hall and parlour house on the lot and perhaps adding the entry porch which graces the front of the building today.

The odd taper of the chimneys flanking the eastern gable end of the house suggests that the original roof was thatch or shingle which had to be kept away from excessive heat. Dew’s original lot was large, 140 feet square, bounded by roads on every side. At the time a now-vanished street separated the house from the Whitehall lot to the east. Broad Alley to the south once bisected the Whitehall lot and extended to Duke of Clarence Street.

George Dew was a ship captain with a chequered past. He first came to Bermuda in 1691 to obtain a letter of marque and a ship from the colony’s governor, Isaac Richier. En route to Africa, a storm damaged Dew’s vessel and forced him to return home to Bermuda empty handed. His consort, the Amity, under the command of Thomas Tew, turned pirate and took several rich prizes in the Indian Ocean. Tew was a surprisingly honest pirate, however, in that he gave the Bermudian owners of the Amity a small fortune as their share of his plunder.

Dew next tried to enter the African slave trade but had no more success than in his privateering venture. While sailing from Barbados to Africa as captain of the brigantine Marigold, a storm damaged his ship and his crew mutinied, forcing him to sail to Bermuda. He then retired from maritime pursuits and made his home in St George’s. Dew entered politics as an assemblyman, married the daughter of merchant John Welch and had three children before he died in 1702. In his will he left the house to his widow Ann and then to his children.

Records do not reveal who owned the house after Ann’s death but by 1763 mariner Richard Somersall had acquired it. In May of that year Somersall gave it to his daughter Ann and son-in-law, the Reverend Alexander Richardson, rector of St George’s parish church, ‘for the better maintenance and preferment’ of the couple. Ann died four years later but Richardson continued to live here with his second wife Mary until his own death in 1805. Although the parish never owned the house and it was never officially designated as a rectory, Reverend Richardson’s long occupancy resulted in the name which has remained with the house for nearly two centuries.

Richardson bequeathed the house to the Esten family and it became the home of Martha Dickinson (née Esten) after her husband James died in 1807. She carried out a major refurbishment and lived in the house until the 1850s when she left Bermuda to join her daughter in Guernsey. After her death there in 1857, the property was sold to Dr Frederick A S Hunter, who bought the house mainly for its large lot. He lived in the much larger Poinciana House to the northwest which at the time had rather small grounds. Hunter annexed most of the western portion of Dew’s large grant to Poinciana House, leaving the Old Rectory property much diminished. When his heirs sold the house to Robert Harley James in 1903, it included only a small fraction of Dew’s original grant. James also owned neighbouring Whitehall, and he further reduced the Old Rectory ground by transferring a small portion of land on the eastern side to the Whitehall lot.

James’ heirs sold the ancient house to the Bermuda Historical Monuments Trust in 1950. While conducting a much-needed renovation, several early original timber-framed walls were discovered within the building. It is now owned and maintained by that group’s successor, the Bermuda National Trust. Its modest size and Jacobean style offer a sharp contrast to Whitehall next door, built a century later.