Montserrat

Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory in the Leeward Islands, is a pear-shaped volcanic island with an elected Legislative Assembly and a governor appointed in London. Three groups of hills shape it: the Silver Hills in the north; the forested Centre Hills, where the black-and-yellow Montserrat oriole, found nowhere else, lives; and the Soufrière Hills in the south, whose volcano woke in July 1995. Where its ash flows reached the sea they built new land, and scientists at Flemmings keep watch over it.

To the Kalinago it was Alliouagana, ‘land of the prickly bush’; Columbus, sailing past in November 1493, named it after the mountain monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona. Irish Catholics, many from St Kitts, settled from 1632, and visitors’ passports are stamped with a shamrock in their memory. Enslaved Africans were shipped in to work the cane; a rising planned for St Patrick’s Day 1768 was betrayed, and the holiday honours its leaders too. Later eruptions buried Plymouth, the main town, and drove many islanders to Britain.

St Patrick’s week brings masquerade dancers and fife bands, and goat water, the thick stew that is the national dish. Arrow’s calypso Hot Hot Hot, recorded in 1982, became a worldwide hit. George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, opened AIR Montserrat in 1979, and the Police, Dire Straits and Elton John recorded there until Hurricane Hugo wrecked it in 1989. Sand and gravel from the volcano’s valleys are shipped to other islands, and British aid funds much of the budget.