Island Heritage - SAM LORDS CASTLE
The Pirate, Sam Lord, was born in 1778, one of three boys and three girls and had inherited the Long Bay, St. Philip property from his mother in the early 1800's and used the castle as the base of his pirate reign. Sam Lord's famous castle also has a tale of twists and turns that ends in a fiery blaze.
The original Long Bay mansion was replaced in the 1800's after the Barbados hurricane of 1831 partially destroyed the castle. It took three years to rebuild its replacement the fantastic new Georgian mansion now called "Sam Lord's Castle" which, was thought to have been funded, in part, by the pieces of eight plundered by the castles namesake, Samuel Hall Lord.
Heralds of Sam Lord and his castle have been placed in film, poetry and folk song. But who would have thought that centuries later the Castle, perched atop a spectacular cliff, overlooking the picturesque coast, would be the perfect location for a fantastic hotel, a beautiful 72 acre site and the playground of the rich and famous. In fact, several episodes of the famous soap opera "The Bold and The Beautiful" were filmed the hotel and at several other sites around Barbados.
In its hay day the luxury hotel once even owned by the Marriot Group was described as a 248 room mixed hotel/villa masterpiece with elaborate furnishings fit for a castle. Over the years the hotel changed hands several times due to poor management and large debts and by 2006, when its fittings went to the auction block the castle was only a shadow of its former glory. Today the castle is a shell a ruin from a 2010 fire that consumed its walls and burned the every secret of the pirate Sam Lord and his castle on the cliff.
