Terra Nova All Suite Hotel

A Great House That Never Stopped Entertaining

The house was built in the nineteen twenties on ten acres of Waterloo Road, commissioned by a merchant of the Myers rum family as a setting for his wife to receive Kingston society. It passed by marriage to the Lindo and Blackwell families, and it was here that Chris Blackwell was born, long before Island Records existed. It became a hotel at the end of the fifties and has been receiving people ever since, which is the thread running through its whole history. The formality is still there in the public rooms, and so is the owner equestrian streak, announced by a cast iron horse at the door.

Why It Works

Kingston has taller hotels and newer ones. It has very few where the building is the reason to come. Every room here is a suite, which changes what a night in the capital feels like: a sitting area, a walk in closet, a desk that is a desk. The upper categories add a study, a wet bar and a jetted tub. Add a kitchen with a real reputation in the city, gardens that have had a century to grow, and a staff used to long staying guests, and the address earns its detour inland.

Why This Location

Waterloo Road sits just above Half Way Tree, the crossroads of uptown Kingston, which puts the hotel between the business district and the older residential streets rather than in the middle of either. Devon House, its lawns and its ice cream counter, is a short walk. The Bob Marley Museum on Hope Road and the galleries of New Kingston are a few minutes by car, and Norman Manley International Airport is about half an hour away across the harbour. What the position really buys is calm: the gardens hold the traffic at a distance.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: Old world Kingston, formal, equestrian, quietly grand

• Rooms: Around forty six suites, from Premium Junior Suites to named Signature suites with separate studies

• Best For: Business travellers and long stays, couples who prefer a historic house, families using the capital as a base

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The wall of competition trophies and the cast iron horse at the entrance, which tell you whose house this still is

• Dining: The Regency Restaurant and its wine list, the Terrace from breakfast through dinner, the Regency Bar and Lounge, and an in house patisserie

• Amenities: Outdoor pool, fitness centre open around the clock, business centre, banquet and wedding spaces, tropical gardens

• Attractions: Devon House (a short walk), Half Way Tree, Bob Marley Museum and Emancipation Park (both a few minutes by car)

Suites Named After the House and Its Country

There are three registers to choose from. The Premium Junior Suites are the everyday rooms, generous by Kingston standards, with a king bed, a sitting area and a proper working desk. Above them sit the Signature Executive suites, Hemingway and Waterloo, which add a separate study with a computer and printer. At the top, the Signature Luxury suites, Derby, Blue Mountain and Terra Nova, bring a wet bar, a minibar and a jetted tub. The names are not decoration: they point at the racing stable, the road and the mountain range that shaped the house.

The Regency, the Terrace and the Patisserie

The Regency is the formal room, European in influence, and the wine list is the part Kingston talks about. The Terrace is the everyday alternative, serving breakfast and staying open through the day, and it is where most guests actually eat. The Regency Bar and Lounge fills in the evening and takes on a livelier life at the weekend, when the house becomes a going out address for the city rather than a hotel bar. The patisserie handles coffee and cake, which matters in a city where meetings happen over both.

Gardens, Pool and the Business of Events

The grounds are the quiet advantage: mature planting, lawns, and a rectangular pool set against a mosaic water feature. The event spaces look out on all of it, which is why so many Kingston weddings and corporate evenings end up here. For a guest the practical consequence is worth knowing: the house fills and empties around functions, and the mornings are the calmest hours of the day.