Banana Manor on Blockade Alley just north of Shinbone Alley was built by Dr George Forbes on land that one of his professional predecessors, surgeon George Ramsey, had formerly owned. The lot had been granted to Sarah Tucker, whose father, Daniel Tucker, had surveyed the land in question. Sarah married Dr Ramsey a few months later so the grant amounted to a free dowry, compliments of His Majesty the King. The Ramseys apparently moved elsewhere and Forbes obtained the lot about 1741.

George Forbes was an immigrant to Bermuda. Born in Strathdon Parish, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1710, he learned ‘phisick and surgery’ at the University of Aberdeen and graduated in 1734. Late in that year he came to Bermuda where he fell in love with Mary Jones, the daughter of prominent merchant, councillor and militia general, Francis Jones. Forbes’ letters of introduction from the Duchess of Gordon and his kinsmen, Lord Forbes, Sir Arthur Forbes and Sir Duncan Forbes, were impeccable, and the couple married in 1737. Their first child, Francis, was born at Brackish Pond in Devonshire in 1740, but succeeding children were born in St George’s.

The house that Forbes built was originally T-shaped, with a single wing extending to the north from the centre of the main building. Each end terminated in a large internal chimney, but only the eastern one has survived. The house offers the first example of the Georgian style in St George’s, with a central passage leading from the front door to hall, parlour and bedroom. Doubtless Forbes was exposed to the style in Edinburgh and London before he emigrated, so it is not surprising that he organised his home in this way. The front windows are extremely tall, suggesting that there may have been French doors opening onto a long now-vanished verandah. Later, as the family grew, Forbes added northern wings to the east and west ends of the house, creating an E-shaped floor plan. Facing Somers Garden, Forbes’ mansion was prominently located and highly visible to local and overseas visitors alike.

George Forbes was a true 18th century intellect. As a physician he pioneered smallpox inoculation in the colony. He sent two of his sons to medical school in Edinburgh and was the personal doctor of Governor William Popple. He became a successful merchant by using connections in Britain to good end and sending two other sons to the West Indies to serve as family business agents. He also built a wharf near Stile Point. As an amateur scientist, Forbes regularly subscribed to the Philosophick Transactions and exchanged specimens with John Fothergill and others in London. He was an avid gardener and attempted to raise everything from China tea plants to Portuguese cork trees in the terraced upper and lower gardens surrounding his house. Forbes also had a distinguished career in public service; he was a councillor and vestryman from 1752 until his death in 1778, justice of the peace in 1763 and, briefly, chief justice in 1749.

In George Forbes’ 1774 will, he gave his wife Mary the use of all his property for her lifetime and then directed that his estate be evenly divided among their six children. Sons William and Thomas were merchants in St Kitt’s and Charleston, South Carolina in 1774 and died before their mother. Francis and Robert were doctors, both of whom lived in St George’s. James had failed as a merchant in Georgetown and Charleston, South Carolina and returned home to Bermuda. He evidently suffered from mental illness, for his sister Ann was appointed his guardian.

Ann herself was no stranger to mental illness. Her merchant husband John Hinson went mad after suffering commercial failure in 1774 and had to be confined after he ‘began to rave’. After Dr Forbes’ death, Ann Hinson occupied Banana Manor. Francis and James lived on Paget Island, their mother, Mary Forbes, lived in the Forbes’ house and farm on Smith’s Island and Robert lived in the Brick House on Water Street until his death in 1785.

After Ann Hinson died in 1817, the house became the residence of her son, Francis Forbes Hinson, who in turn left it to his wife and children when he died in Nassau, Bahamas in 1832. Tragically, his 15 year old son George and several other Bermudian boys were washed overboard from the brig Recruit while returning home from college in Windsor, Nova Scotia a few months later. Francis Hinson’s widow, Sarah, died in 1840 and within a year their daughter Mary Lough bought out her sister Lucy’s share in the inheritance. Mary had married the Reverend John Lough, the Oxford educated rector of St Peter’s Church who quarrelled frequently with his vestry. He died during one such fight in January 1839.

During the American Civil War, Mary Lough rented Banana Manor to Confederate shipping agent Major Norman Walker. His wife Georgiana ran the blockade in March 1863 to join him in Bermuda and set up house in the ‘cottage’, as she called it. George Forbes’ garden was still flourishing, for Mrs Walker found her new home ‘embowered with trees & flowers which bloom throughout the year. We can count a dozen different kinds of fruits’.

In June Mrs Walker gave birth to a son in the house, whom she named Randolph St George Walker. But her joy was diminished by the worsening condition of her daughter ‘Little Georgie’ who had chronic eye troubles and had to be confined to a dark room in the back of the house most of the day.

The house played host to various Confederate dignitaries passing through Bermuda, but never more so than at Christmas 1863 when the Walkers gave a party in the house attended by more than 100 Southerners. ‘The Confederate Flag’, Walker wrote, ‘gaily decorated my little cottage. We had Confederate songs, dancing and games. . . . We parted almost at “rosy dawn” & all declared that they had been happier than they believed they could be out of Dixie.’

The following month Walker transformed the house into ‘a fairy scene’ when she hosted an amateur dramatics night for the children of garrison officers, attended by the 39th Regiment Band. The Walkers stayed until yellow fever drove them, and the blockade runners, from Bermuda in the summer of 1864.

In the 1870s Banana Manor went quickly downhill, its Enlightenment Garden and southern hospitality forgotten. Thomas W Foster owned the house for six years before selling it to Daniel Lane, a livery stable keeper who originally came from Ireland. Lane built a large complex of stable buildings behind the house and set up numerous watering troughs in the front yard. He competed with the Spurling family for the business of the increasing number of visitors to St George’s after the Causeway was completed.

Lane himself lived in Devonshire, far from the stink of horse manure, and the house was presumably rented. The liveryman died in 1886, and seven years later his widow sold the property to Ole Edward Jensen, a grocer and ‘xylographer’ (one who carves wooden blocks for printing). In 1900 Jensen sold the property to another stable keeper, Joseph Martin, who expanded operations by purchasing Chandler’s Cottage across the street and building more stables on that property. In 1933 James Robinson, yet another liveryman, purchased the house but sold it four years later to Frederick Collins Outerbridge, who lived next door in Greig Hall.

Outerbridge converted the old stables into cold storage, combining those near Banana Manor with others belonging to Greig Hall to the north. He used this extensive new storage complex to stockpile food during the Second World War and supplied the troop ships and convoys bound for Europe. He channelled his wealth into real estate and at one time owned perhaps a tenth of the buildings in the town.

Since 1994 Banana Manor has been restored to some of its former glory. The banana grove in front has been trimmed back to reveal George Forbes’ house and lower garden once again. The old, pillared gate on the west side of the house reminds us that once this alley, the Governor’s Walk, extended from the gate of Governor’s Garden to the front of Government House on the site of the Unfinished Church. The northern part of the path was enclosed in 1940 and became part of the front lawn of Greig Hall.