Er­line An­drews

When An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berkley first saw Hayes Court–the state­ly Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ing that is the bish­op's of­fi­cial res­i­dence–he was a na�ve teenag­er vis­it­ing from To­ba­go.

"I thought it was a palace," he re­called with amuse­ment, as he showed a re­porter a build­ing that has be­come a dim shad­ow of its for­mer self.

Named af­ter the An­gli­can Dio­cese's sec­ond bish­op, Thomas Hayes, the house was built in 1910 on land do­nat­ed anony­mous­ly. His­to­ri­an Ol­ga Mavro­gorda­to de­scribed it as "a typ­i­cal grand house with a pleas­ant mix­ture of French and Eng­lish style."

Over the years, it's re­ceived guests sig­nif­i­cant to the An­gli­can Church and the world, like South African Arch­bish­op and No­bel Peace Prize win­ner Desmond Tu­tu, and Arch­bish­ops of Can­ter­bury and heads of the An­gli­can Church Robert Run­cie and Don­ald Cog­gan.

Re­tired bish­op Clive Ab­du­lah, the first T&T-born bish­op to serve and the longest-serv­ing one so far, re­mem­bers gar­den par­ties and VIP re­cep­tions dur­ing his 23 years there.

"You have a dual func­tion," he said of the bish­op and his spouse. "You're the chief host and host­ess for the dio­cese, as well you have a po­si­tion in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

"When we had the con­se­cra­tion of the new bish­op or when we had dis­tin­guished vis­i­tors there, you not on­ly in­vit­ed the church peo­ple, you in­vit­ed the pres­i­dent and his wife, the chief jus­tice and his wife–you went down the pro­to­col list."

To­day, paint in­side and out­side the pale blue and white build­ing is crack­ing and peel­ing. Leaks have stained and dam­aged spots on the ceil­ing. Ter­mites are de­vour­ing wood­en parts of the house, in­clud­ing the or­nate dou­ble doors lead­ing in­to the liv­ing room, where a wick­er couch–part of a quin­tes­sen­tial­ly colo­nial fur­ni­ture set–leans to the side, one leg ly­ing bro­ken be­neath it.

The dark var­nished wood of the twist­ing stair­case lead­ing to the bed­rooms is chipped and scratched. As Berkley as­cends, tread­ing on the worn, red car­pet cov­er­ing the stairs, he lifts a large dec­o­ra­tive knob that has come loose from one of the newel posts.

A light is al­ways left on in a vain at­tempt to dis­cour­age bats, which in­vade the build­ing, de­posit­ing drop­pings on the white walls and door of the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to a long, nar­row store­room at the back of the build­ing.

Bish­op Berkley is acute­ly aware of the mes­sage all this con­veys.

"I have heard peo­ple say, 'This is the face of An­gli­can­ism, so when I see how your build­ing looks I know the church is in trou­ble,'" he said.

Bish­ops can no longer live in the house com­fort­ably. The last one to live there full time was Rawle Douglin, who re­tired in 2001. His suc­ces­sor Calvin Bess stayed there oc­ca­sion­al­ly. Berkley, bish­op since 2011, lives near­by on La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road, but he keeps his of­fice at Hayes Court and can still be found there dur­ing the day. While the build­ing isn't as busy as it once was, the dioce­san of­fices are in an ex­ten­sion to the back, and the staff holds meet­ings in the main house, where the kitchen, reg­u­lar­ly used, is well kept.

Ser­vices are held in the tiny chapel on Fri­days and oc­ca­sion­al­ly there's a wed­ding or bap­tism. An­gli­can schools and groups still hold events there. Decades af­ter it first im­pressed Berkley, vis­i­tors still find Hayes Court some­thing to ad­mire, even though they'd like to see it re­turn to its for­mer glo­ry.

"Peo­ple take the place as it is," said Berkley. "They think this is a great place, [and they ask] why can't we do some­thing to bring it up back up to scratch."

That's the ques­tion many are ask­ing about not on­ly Hayes Court but oth­er struc­tures dubbed her­itage build­ings.

Her­itage build­ings are very old and val­ued for their beau­ty, dis­tinct ar­chi­tec­ture and his­tor­i­cal im­por­tance.

The stun­ning col­lapse of the roof of Pres­i­dent's House short­ly be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion in 2010 brought home how vul­ner­a­ble these build­ings were and how in­ad­e­quate­ly they were be­ing pre­served.

To­day, most of the state-owned her­itage build­ings in Port-of-Spain are at some stage of restora­tion. Al­though the process has been piece­meal and not near­ly fast enough for ac­tivists, for now at least the state-owned build­ings seem no longer in dan­ger of falling apart or hav­ing their orig­i­nal de­sign sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­tered.

The same can't be said about build­ings, like Hayes Court, that are not owned by the State.

The cal­cu­la­tions of Bish­op Berkley il­lus­trate one of the ma­jor ob­sta­cles in the way of pro­tect­ing them.

"The fig­ure to re­pair this house can build us six hous­es," he said of Hayes Court. Keep­ing it stand­ing "has no oth­er val­ue to us ex­cept for sen­ti­men­tal rea­sons, for the his­toric­i­ty of the build­ing."

It's un­like­ly Berkley would se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er get­ting rid of Hayes Court. Oth­er than the af­fec­tion parish­ioners still hold for the build­ing, he al­so wouldn't want to in­cur the wrath of the small but vo­cal group of her­itage pro­tec­tion ac­tivists in T&T, led by the re­cent­ly reignit­ed Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion.

When the 144-year-old McLeod House in Ch­agua­nas was de­mol­ished late last year, it sparked "out­rage"–the word used in one head­line–that was ex­pressed on­line and in state­ments to the me­dia.

Berkley re­mem­bers the in­ci­dent well. In fact, he's re­mind­ed of it, he said, by parish­ioners wor­ried he doesn't share their at­tach­ment to Hayes Court.

"There will be a huge out­cry," he said, pre­dict­ing the re­ac­tion to the de­mo­li­tion of Hayes Court. "I sup­pose we'll be de­monised, prob­a­bly black­list­ed, which would not add to our busi­ness as [a] church."

But with oth­er press­ing de­mands on the church's lim­it­ed fi­nances, it's im­pos­si­ble to stretch them to cov­er the cost of restora­tion, which has been es­ti­mat­ed as $34.5 mil­lion, and the sub­se­quent re­cur­ring cost of main­te­nance.

A com­mit­tee has been set up to fundraise for the project. But such at­tempts have been made in the past to no sig­nif­i­cant ef­fect.

The statu­to­ry body in charge of doc­u­ment­ing and pro­tect­ing her­itage sites, the Na­tion­al Trust, so far has com­piled an in­ven­to­ry of 408 of them. Al­most half are owned by non-state en­ti­ties.

To the re­lief of ac­tivists, the trust has fi­nal­ly be­gun bring­ing these build­ings un­der the le­gal pro­tec­tion of the Na­tion­al Trust Act, en­act­ed 14 years ago, which pro­hibits own­ers from de­mol­ish­ing or se­ri­ous­ly al­ter­ing the build­ings with­out the trust's per­mis­sion.

So far 13 build­ings, in­clud­ing Hayes Court and the rest of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, have re­ceived this pro­tec­tion.

But on top of what crit­ics have called an in­ad­e­quate fine for breach­ing the law–$5,000–leg­is­la­tion alone won't save build­ings if pri­vate own­ers sim­ply can't af­ford to re­store or main­tain them.