Regent, Sierra Leone

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.

Regent
Regent
Location in Sierra Leone
Coordinates: 8°26′3″N 13°13′23″W
Country Sierra Leone
RegionWestern Area
DistrictWestern Area Rural District
Government
 • TypeTown Council
 • Town HeadJohn R. Benjamin[1]
Time zoneUTC-5 (GMT)
New road in Regent (2015)

The population of Regent is ethnically and religiously very diverse.

Regent is the hometown of Sierra Leonean economist and politician, Solomon A. J Pratt.[2]

History

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.[3]:122 Originally called Hogbrook,[4] Regent was named in honour of the George IV of the United Kingdom, at the time Prince Regent of England.

St Charles Church

The St Charles’ Church was built in 1816 as part of the Parish Plan.[4] 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”.[4] 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.[4] However after Johnson's death in 1823, the size of the congregation became much smaller.[4]

2017 mudslide

On the morning of August 14, 2017, a large landslide killed at least 500 people after a night of heavy rains, with the death toll expected to rise.[5] 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.[6] The suburb is at the brink of the Atlantic Ocean, thus bodies floated in the shallows and drifted north towards neighboring Conakry, Guinea.[7]

References
  1. (PDF) http://www.nec-sierraleone.org/index_files/2013_P_Release/Village%20Head%20Elections%20Statement_%20Final%20_%201JULY2013.pdf. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. "Solomon A. J Pratt. - Google Search". www.google.com. Retrieved 2017-08-31.
  3. Sanneh, Lamin (2009). Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  4. "St Charles' Church and King's Yard wall". SierraLeoneHeritage.org. SierraLeoneHeritage.org. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  5. "Sierra Leone: Death toll from landslide nears 500". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  6. "Hundreds buried alive in massive Sierra Leone mudslides and floods". Washington Post. Retrieved 2017-08-31.
  7. "Guinea says 19 bodies washed up after Sierra Leone mudslide". Reuters. 30 August 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-31.
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