Regent, Sierra Leone
| Regent | |
|---|---|
 Regent
|
|
| Coordinates: 8°26′3″N 13°13′23″W / 8.43417°N 13.22306°WCoordinates: 8°26′3″N 13°13′23″W / 8.43417°N 13.22306°W | |
| Country |
 Sierra Leone
|
| Region | Western Area |
| District | Western Area Rural District |
| Government | |
| • Type | Town Council |
| • Town Head | John R. Benjamin |
| Time zone | GMT (UTC-5) |
Regent is a mountainous town in the Western Area Rural District of Sierra Leone. Regent lies approximately six miles east of Freetown, and close to the village of Gloucester.
The population of Regent is ethnically and religiously very diverse.
Regent is the hometown of Sierra Leonean economist and politician, Solomon A. J Pratt.
Regent was founded in 1812 to provide accommodation for liberated enslaved Africans, who had been brought to Freetown by the British Royal Navy West Africa Squadron. Originally called Hogbrook, Regent was named in honour of the George IV of the United Kingdom, at the time Prince Regent of England.
The St Charles’ Church was built in 1816 as part of the Parish Plan. This stone church was financed by the colonial government, and from 1817 the Church Missionary Society paid for a minister, a position taken up by Rev. William Johnson, nicknamed the “Apostle of Regent”. He was so successful in his evangelicalism that soon his congregation exceeded the 500 person capacity of the church, and a gallery was added so that another 200 worshippers could be catered for. However after Johnson's death in 1823, the size of the congregation became much smaller.
On the morning of August 14, 2017, a large landslide killed at least 450 people after a night of heavy rains, with the death toll expected to rise. The flooding occurred in the Regent Hill area of Mount Sugar Loaf, killing an estimated 500 people (some died by the landslide immediately in the middle of the night), but hundreds of others are still missing. The suburb is at the brink of the Atlantic Ocean, thus bodies floated in the shallows and drifted north towards neighboring Conakry, Guinea.
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