The complex of buildings surrounding California House at the foot of Barrack Hill dates to the 1760s. In 1761 Richard Wright obtained ungranted land at the east end of town. He had erected a house by the time he died in 1770. Wright’s twostorey house and detached kitchen went to his grandson Jacob Johnson Wright. Jacob’s wife Sarah ran the household while he, a ship captain, was at sea for much of the year. Jacob died in 1807 while in port in Grenada and Sarah inherited the house. She continued to live there until 1820, when she moved and sold the house to James Barclay. Before she did so, she freed her enslaved woman Kate and Kate’s two children and gave her ‘a certain room or building . . . at the East End of town on rising ground above my now mansion house at the foot of Barrack Hill’. This cottage was later incorporated into or replaced by Keystone Cottage set into the cliff to the east above California House today. Sarah Wright required Kate’s children to care for their mother in her old age as a condition of their inheriting the house.

James and Honora Barclay owned the house for ten years. For part of the time, they rented it to Mary Catterall, a free Black woman who apparently operated a tavern on the premises (see the Redan Hotel in this chapter), conveniently situated to attract customers among the garrison soldiers living nearby.

James Barclay died in 1831 and his widow sold California House to James A Bell for £500. In 1848 the Bell family sold the property, advertised as ‘first rate for carrying on retail, grocery and dry goods’ establishments, to William Hayward. A map made in 1876 reveals that the police used the small cottage in front of the main house as a lockup for the often drunk soldiers who frequented the bars on Shinbone Alley.

Two years later the McCallan family purchased California House. They held onto the property until 1922 when John Kirby Curling Outerbridge acquired it.

The California House property offers a good example of a late 18th century domestic complex. The upper floor of the main house was used for sleeping and entertaining, while the lower floor provided storage, work space and retail shop rooms. Food was prepared in the detached kitchen in the yard and brought into the main house through the lower floor and an internal staircase. Elsewhere in the yard are a privy and buttery.