1 ALUMINUM BLINDS

George Washington House, at Bush Hill on the Garrison Savannah, Bridgetown, Barbados, is one of the earliest surviving houses on the island and was built around 1720. George Washington stayed here with his invalid brother Lawrence in 1751 on his only visit outside the continental USA. He contracted smallpox whilst in Barbados, and survived and the immunity this gave him was invaluable when the Continental Army was stricken with the disease during the Revolutionary War. George Washington House is now a house museum restored to reflect the eighteenth-century ambience that would have existed during Washington's stay there. It also houses exhibitions on the visit by the Washington brothers, the system of plantation slavery that they encountered in Barbados, and the connections between Barbados and the United States.

This photo shows a traditional Barbadian dripstone water filter outside the house, and the characteristic hooded windows with plantation shutters of Caribbean Georgian architecture.

George Washington House is part of the ensemble of buildings that constitute Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List of natural and cultural sites of outstanding universal significance in June 2011.

Reference: Roslyn Russell, Barbados: More Than A Beach (publication pending)

The chattel house is the traditional form of Barbadian domestic dwelling, a simple timber building with a steep pitched roof, symmetrically placed doors and windows with shutters or jalousies, and designed to be dismantled and moved from one plantation to another, and mounted on coralstone blocks as footings. This chattel house is part of a village preserved at Tyrol Cot, the former home of Sir Grantley Adams, first premier of Barbados, and his wife Lady Grace Adams. Their son Tom Adams was later prime minister of Barbados. Behind the chattel house to the right can be seen the thatched roof and stone walls of a former hut from the era of slavery in Barbados that ended in 1838. Tyrol Cot is a National Trust of Barbados property.