Admiralty House, Bermuda

Admiralty House, Bermuda
Admiralty House at Clarence Hill (formerly St. John's Hill).
Active	1795-1956
Country	United Kingdom
Branch	Royal Navy
Role	Station command
Garrison/HQ	North America and West Indies Station

Admiralty House in Bermuda was the official residence and offices for the senior officer of the Royal Navy in the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda, originally the Commander-in-Chief of the North America and West Indies Station.

The first location of the Admiralty House had been at Rose Hill, in St. George's Town, between 1795 and 1806. This was where Irish poet Thomas Moore was employed as a clerk to the Admiralty Court in 1803. St. George's Harbour, up 'til that time, had been the only harbour suitable for large naval vessels that also had a known access route through Bermuda's encircling barrier reef (the Admiralty had plans to utilise Castle Harbour but its shallow waters, and its treacherous entrance through Castle Roads proved dangerous in stormy weather). The Royal Navy had begun establishing itself in and around the town, especially at Convict Bay, but had longer term plans for a dockyard and naval base at the opposite end of the archipelago. Royal Naval hydrographers had spent a dozen years in charting the reef, and had discovered a channel that enabled the Royal Navy to begin mooring vessels off the northern shore of St. George's Island at a location that became known as Murray's Anchorage, after Vice-Admiral Sir George Murray, who led the first fleet to anchor there in 1794. This also opened up the West End of Bermuda, where the Royal Navy had already begun purchasing land around the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour, to access by large vessels.

St. John's Hill, a property at Spanish Point, in Pembroke Parish that belonged to John Dunscombe (a Bermudian who later became a prominent resident and Lieutenant-Governor of Newfoundland), was rented by the Admiralty in 1810 as a residence for the Royal Naval Commander-in-Chief, by then Admiral Sir John Warren. It was then intended to move Admiralty House to a building on Langton Hill, also in Pembroke, but this evidently did not happen. In 1810, Admiralty House moved instead to the rented Mount Wyndham, above Bailey's Bay. This location allowed observation of both St. George's Harbour and Murray's Anchorage, and signals could be passed between these points with visual aids (flags or lights). Mount Wyndham was "granted by" the House of Assembly in 1812, and St. John's Hill (which was still being rented by the Admiralty, but had been sitting vacant) was adapted to a naval hospital during a yellow fever epidemic that year.