- Mill Reef Club
-
The Mill Reef Club is a 700 acre exclusive members-only resort in Antigua, founded in 1947 by Robertson 'Happy' Ward (1897–1988), with initial capital of $38,000. There were 45 founding members, each paying $7,500 for a plot for building a home. A clubhouse was constructed in 1949, and a 9-hole golf course in 1952 using the capital raised from the first members, who included Paul Mellon, who later named his champion horse Mill Reef for the Club.
The Club was designed for the wealthy to live in low-key style and ostentatious displays of wealth were discouraged by a $25,000 construction costs cap, with a 2-bedroom limit to houses (no longer in force). Membership was by invitation only, either through existing members or by Ward encouraging travel agents to pass on the details of high-end clients.[1]
Other early members included Archibald MacLeish, Dean Acheson and the Macy Family.
The Antiguan government welcomed its wealthy, publicity-shy guests, and when paparazzi attempted to photograph Jacqueline Kennedy from an adjacent public beach, they were arrested and deported from the island.[2]
The Club originally had a dresscode including ties for dinner and whites on the tennis court. It also excluded children from the club until the mid-1980s; the Club today provides children's entertainment at its Kids Kastle.[3]
Robertson Ward, architect of the Mill Reef Club, also designed Sandy Lane Resort, an exclusive resort in Barbados.
The Club and its residents were criticised in A Small Place, a 1988 book by Jamaica Kincaid, which noted that ordinary Antiguans stood no chance of entry to the Club unless as servants or staff, suggesting that they would only donate to restore the damaged Antigua Public Library out of colonial nostalgia, having no interest in the more practical needs of its users.
References
External links
Categories:- Islands of Antigua and Barbuda
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
