Manchester occupies the mountainous interior of the south-center of the island. It was created on December 13, 1814 —one of the most recent parishes—, formed with portions of Saint Elizabeth and Clarendon and the whole of the old parish of Vere, at the request of the inhabitants of areas like Mile Gully, May Pen and Carpenters Mountain, who complained of being too far from an administrative center. It took its name from the Duke of Manchester, then governor of Jamaica.
Its capital, Mandeville, named in honor of the duke's son and heir, stands at about 628 meters of altitude (2,061 feet), which makes it the highest town in Jamaica, with a cool and pleasant climate very different from the coastal heat. It developed as a retreat for British planters and officials and keeps a strong English character in its central square, its stone parish church and its gardens.
For all that it's known as the 'English town' of Jamaica. Its orderly layout around a green, its stately houses and its highland atmosphere distinguish it radically from the beach image of the island, and make it a place valued for its tranquility and its climate.
The temperate climate of Manchester favored, from the 18th century, an agriculture different from that of the rest of the island. After emancipation, many freed people settled in the area to grow coffee and other products on small hillside farms, and the parish became an important coffee-growing center, with facilities like the High Mountain Coffee factory in Williamsfield.
Manchester also became famous for its citrus —oranges, tangerines, grapefruit— and for highland crops uncommon in the Caribbean tropics, like the potato (Irish potato), ginger and cool-climate vegetables. Even today the parish produces much of the country's potato, and its countryside of green hills keeps a strong agricultural vocation.
That combination of coffee, citrus and highland crops gave Manchester a prosperous and diversified economy, very different from the sugar monoculture of the plains, and helped forge its orderly and well-to-do character.
The great change in the economy of Manchester came in 1942, when it was discovered that the parish held one of the largest bauxite deposits in Jamaica, the ore from which aluminum is extracted. The find transformed this agricultural region into one of the centers of an industry that would be, for decades, one of the pillars of the national economy.
The mining and processing of bauxite and alumina, in the hands of large foreign companies, brought employment, infrastructure and a new community tied to that activity, with facilities like those of the Alpart area, on the border with Saint Elizabeth. The exploitation of bauxite marked the highland landscape and tied the fortune of the parish to the swings of the world aluminum market.
Thus, Manchester remained a parish of a double soul: agricultural and temperate in its tradition, industrial and mining in the 20th century, a crossroads between the coffee of its hills and the bauxite of its subsoil.
Manchester has given Jamaica great figures of sport, in a country that dominates world athletics. From the parish comes Elaine Thompson-Herah, double Olympic champion in the 100 and 200 meters and one of the fastest sprinters in history, trained at Manchester High School in Mandeville. Her name adds to the sporting pride that runs through the whole island and that in Manchester has roots of its own.
The parish is also known for its close link with the Jamaican diaspora. Many of its inhabitants emigrated to England, the United States and Canada throughout the 20th century, and the remittances and returnees have left a visible mark on the landscape, with neighborhoods of modern houses built by those who made their fortune abroad.
That prosperous and cosmopolitan character, together with its temperate climate and its agricultural and industrial tradition, gives Manchester a singular physiognomy within Jamaica: that of a highland parish, peaceful and open to the world, very different from the beach image of the island.
Manchester is a prosperous, orderly and green parish, without direct access to the great beach tourism, but valued for its tranquility, its climate and its landscape of hills and mountains. The Carpenters Mountains range, with peaks of up to some 845 meters, crowns its relief, and in its territory open caverns, springs and lookouts over the interior of the island.
Mandeville functions as the commercial, educational and service center of the whole central region, and serves as the gateway to the rural and mountainous interior of Jamaica. From here you reach coffee estates, highland peasant communities and mountain landscapes little frequented by conventional tourism.
Its serene atmosphere, its stately houses and its mountain views make it a different destination, ideal for those who want to get to know the Jamaica of the interior —that of coffee, potato and the cool highland air— far from the resorts, between nature, history and an atmosphere of British air.