Repairs have begun on the Old Webster House on South Church Street after it was damaged in a car crash on Christmas Day 2025.
The National Trust register of historic properties shows that the Webster home was originally built for the Webster family by Mellie Goring in 1894. The Webster family is believed to have lived in this home in George Town after moving out of another old house located in Bodden Town.
Compass Media and Dart’s TimeBack project secured an image of that old Bodden Town residence before it fell into disrepair following Hurricane Ivan.
Like many of the remaining traditional Caymanian houses, the Webster house is framed with shiplap planks and large parts of the home are made of mahogany. It also sits on stilts made from local ironwood.
An endemic tree that grows nowhere else in the world, Caymanian ironwood is so dense that it sinks in salt water, and is so hard that it bends nails.
Because ironwood is extremely hard and resistant to termites and other insects, it was traditionally used in building houses. Ironwood logs were cut and shaped by hand into 13-foot, 4-by-4-inch pieces, and used as the foundation posts on each corner of the house.
The Webster house, like many of the other old dwellings, also features a steeply pitched roof. This roof design keeps the houses cooler as hot air rises.
One of Cayman’s original families
The Websters are one of the original Caymanian families. A family tree shows descendants of the Webster family in the Cayman Islands dating back hundreds of years.
According to the family records, John Webster married Elizabeth Bodden, who was Governor William Bodden’s daughter.
One of the items that has been passed down through the generations of Websters is an old mahogany box which holds the round-handled pistols of Governor Bodden, who died in 1834.
Roulstone family
In 1950s, the Webster family sold the house on South Church Street to the Roulstone family.
Frank Roulstone, executive director of the National Trust for the Cayman Islands, said that prior to the selling the home to his family, the Websters moved to Jamaica. He explained, “They were in the shipping business, they decided to move to Jamaica, and they first rented the house to the Merren family, and, later in the 1950s, my grandfather purchased the home from the Websters.”
Roulstone said the old homes are an important link to Cayman’s past and represent the heritage of local people.
“It is part of our identity as a country,” he said. “It is equally important who lived in the house or who built the house, and these old homes are really just icons of the way that life used to be.”
In terms of the restoration, Roulstone said, “It would be easy to just slap some Texture One-Eleven on it or something, just to get it fixed, but that’s not the idea. The idea is to restore it back to what it would have been prior to the accident.”
He acknowledged that ongoing maintenance is a constant issue for the old houses. “It’s an old historic building,” he said. “It’s not easy to maintain, the construction methods and materials that were used in 1894 are completely different to what they are today.”
Roulstone also believes an arrangement needs to be made to better financially assist people who are trying to maintain the historic buildings that they own.
He said, “I think that is something we will have to look at in the future, not necessarily for my family, but other families who are trying to keep these properties up; otherwise, it is likely we will continue to lose more of these old Caymanian homes.”
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