Rolandfield in St. Thomas Defies Abandoned-Community Label With Growth and Construction

Deep in the eastern hills of St. Thomas, Rolandfield has long been whispered about as a near-ghost town. Official figures tell another story. According to STATIN Jamaica, the community had 855 residents in 2022. A later count cited locally put the figure at 911 people still living there — language that itself hints at out-migration rather than emptiness.

On a trek of roughly four and a half miles up from the crossroads, a visitor found narrow mountain roads, thick bush, and — at first — no utility poles. Further up, occupied houses, farms, market produce left for collection, and fresh construction made clear that Rolandfield is not Mount Felix or Johnson Mountain, the near-abandoned settlements often compared with it.

Historically the place was a mountain plantation bordered by Hector’s River, producing coffee, cassava and other crops. Local lore links the name to an early owner known as Lord Rolandfield. The name does not appear on James Robertson’s 1804 map of Jamaica; that sheet lists the property under the Honourable Simon Taylor, among the richest planters of the colonial era. Whether Taylor owned the estate or managed it for another remains uncertain.

Resident Byron, born in Rolandfield and returned after time in the United Kingdom following his wife’s death, said younger people leave for England, America and elsewhere while older residents stay and farm. He put today’s population below 911, citing migration and deaths. He recalled ancestors who moved from Portland to Cuban tobacco work and came home after political change under Castro. The Portland border, he said, lies about three to five miles away; a shorter cut can trim the walk by roughly two miles. He also pointed to a monument near the school at the community’s upper end.

Another resident, Miss Russia, reported a two-week water drought with no pipeline service and called for trucks and action from the member of parliament. Blocks stacked for building, new homes and children at play reinforced the sense of a community still expanding rather than fading.

At the crest sits Roland Field Primary and Infant School (Ministry of Education). An elder said army barracks once stood there and were pulled down when the new school was built; a reported colonial monument was not visible from outside the locked gate. A Quaker (Religious Society of Friends) meeting house nearby lists Sunday worship at 10 a.m., Sunday school at 11 a.m., and Wednesday Bible study and prayer at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.

The road does not stop at the school: it continues into Portland toward Hector’s River and Happy Grove, following the old plantation boundary. Utility poles appear higher up, fed by a single line from a neighbouring community. For all the talk of abandonment, Rolandfield today reads as one of eastern Jamaica’s more active rural mountain settlements — still short of reliable water, still carrying colonial questions, but very much alive.