Rookery Nook, off Long Circular Road in Maraval, shot into the limelight with last Monday’s tragedy in which three children perished in a house fire. DOMINIC KALIPERSAD looked into the history of the curiously-named area and recounts its coloured origin.
ROOKERY Nook was once a posh residential neighbourhood in Champs Elysées at the southern end of Maraval. It was part of the vast de Boissierre estate. It was where Britain’s Duke and Duchess of Kent, Prince George and Princess Marina, stayed in what the New York Times described as “a secluded bungalow” during their honeymoon visit to Trinidad in 1935.
Today, the short semi-circular street is mainly a business district, including a bank, restaurants, and other commercial concerns.
The only visible remnant of its connection to its colonial past may be its name, one which it acquired as a result of racism faced by the resident black offspring of an immigrant 18th-century aristocrat of French origin.
That man was John Nicholas Boissière whose family had come to Trinidad as a result of the Cedula of Population of 1783.
At the time, Trinidad was considered underpopulated, and the Cedula, created to attract immigrants, dramatically increased the island’s population from 1,000 people in 1773 to 18,627 by 1797.
This Cedula was established by the Spanish government with the hopes of establishing a flourishing plantation economy on the island. It was the basis upon which mostly white French families from nearby Caribbean islands, as well as families of free Blacks and people of colour, established themselves in Trinidad.
The de Boissière family which originated in Bergerac in Southern France had first settled on Grenada before relocating to Trinidad. Like other French Creoles, they prospered and lived in aristocratic style. And, although exclusivity was cultivated, sexual liaisons with Black and coloured women were not uncommon.
In 1860, John Nicholas Boissière married a mixed-race woman named Marie Aurile Soully. They lived in a house along the Champs Elysées nook.
The marriage, however, was frowned upon by the local White community, and their dark-skinned children were subjected to racial derision.
Neighbours referred to the children as rooks (black crows) who made the house look like a rookery (a breeding colony of crows).
It is not known how Boissière defended his family but, he made an everlasting move that symbolically clapped back at the detractors. He named his house Rookery Nook.
The house no longer exists. In its place stands Kent House (probably named after the visiting Royals), the former head office of BWIA and currently the location of the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government.
The area is still known as Rookery Nook.
