parishes
Today there are 14 parishes (administrative units) in Jamaica, but before the reforms of the 1870s there had been up to 22 parishes. I will have to do a bit of work to allocate race tracks correctly to the old parishes, for the period before the 1870s.
The two great racing parishes were St. Elizabeth and St. Ann.
Daily Gleaner, January 4, 1947
Notes On Racing
(By G. F.)
. . . St Elizabeth.
This parish of broad acres and of cattle upon a hundred hills, as another writer once described it, has from time immemorial been a famous centre for the breeding of thoroughbred stock. Since the days of those rollicking Irishmen John Cuff, Tom Mahon, and Tom Mason, who respectively owned the proposals of Emmaus, Northampton, and Southampton on the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and there bred some of the best horses ever produced in this country, down to the present day, St Elizabeth has been the home of the thoroughbred, and, with its great rival St Ann, has been responsible for the production of nearly all the best horses to race in the island for very many years.
Use the links below for accounts of the race courses and stud farms across the island from the 17th century onwards.
