Georgetown Seawall
Encyclopedia
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
is the Georgetown Seawall.
Seawall
Seawall
A seawall is a form of coastal defence constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation and leisure activities from the action of tides and waves...
is the name given to the wall of concrete built along the foreshore with the sea in Guyana, mostly in Demerara. Earth walls are called sea-dams.
Seawalls were found necessary because of constant erosion of land by the sea. Historians note that two estates, Kierfield and Sandy Point
Sandy Point
-Locations in Australia:*Sandy Point, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney*Sandy Point, Victoria-Locations in Canada:*Sandy Point, Newfoundland and Labrador, now an island due to erosion* Sandy Point, Nova Scotia, a town at the southern tip of the peninsula...
, known to be existing in 1792 north of the present Georgetown Seawall, were completely washed away by 1804.
The foreshore is subject to cycles of erosion and accretion. (Tables of erosion and accretion, started by G.O. Case have been maintained by the government). It appears that accretion in the early 1840s was followed by erosion in the late 1840s. By 1855, the great Kingston Flood took place when the sea-dam was breached. It was after this catastrophe that the sea wall between Fort William Frederick and the Round House was started in 1858. Built principally by convict labor with granite from the Penal Settlement at Mazaruni (now Mazaruni Prison), it was completed in 1892.
Serious flooding resulting from breaches in the sea wall took place at Enmore
Enmore, Guyana
Enmore is a village in the Demerara-Mahaica region along the coastal belt of Guyana. It is about two square miles in size and has a multi-ethnic population of about 8,000, with large concentrations of Indo-Guyanese....
in 1955, at Buxton
Buxton, Guyana
Buxton is a village in the Demerara-Mahaica Region of Guyana, standing about midway between Georgetown and Enmore.-History:Buxton Village was founded in 1840 by a group of freed Afro-Guyanese, who purchased the former Plantation Orange Nassau. Friendship, its sister village was founded in 1841...
in 1959, and at Bladen Hall in 1961.
The Georgetown Seawall is a favourite place for afternoon walks, for listening to music (at the bandstand), for races on the beach, for spontaneous cricket matches, for lovers’ trysts and other activities.
In 1903 the Georgetown Seawall Bandstand was built with funds subscribed by the public as a memorial to Queen Victoria. The shelter north of the bandstand, called the Koh-i-noor Shelter, was erected in 1903.