Family gift keeps Long Bay Beach access open for community

A long-standing tradition of generosity and community spirit continues to shape life in Long Bay, Portland, where the family of the late Annie Neufville has preserved public access to Long Bay Beach in honour of her legacy.

Entrance to the beach was secured decades ago when Neufville and fellow landowner Granville Ellis each ceded three feet of their properties to create a six-foot-wide passageway for residents. This route was essential not only for recreation but also for enabling villagers to collect seawater, once used in the processing of coconut oil for sale.

Today, the 75-metre path from the main road to the shoreline remains a vital artery for the community.

Affectionately known as “Mommy Seaside”, Neufville is remembered as a woman of vision and generosity, whose decision to formally donate the land ensured uninterrupted access for generations.

“She was a very giving, community person,” her great-grandson, Chris Richards, said.

“Originally, people would walk through [the property] to go to the beach and she’d allow them and then she actually went and donated that section so everybody can actually have access,” he pointed out.

The access way is wide enough to accommodate fishermen with trailers and allows wheelchair users to reach the beach with relative ease.

The beach’s value extends well beyond leisure, offering economic and environmental benefits. Fishermen depend on it for their livelihood, residents use the shoreline for exercise and meditation, and turtles continue to come ashore to lay their eggs.

“When I was a kid, I would go to the beach if I had the flu,” Richards said, noting the healing benefits of the salt water.

“We used the beach almost like a medicine to heal. Anything happen, you have a headache, you go to the beach,” he said.

“The kids are down there in the morning and in the evening so you know it’s a benefit to everybody,” he added.

Neufville’s granddaughter, Winsome Walker, recalls disciplined yet joyful childhood visits to the seaside with her grandmother. Beach outings took place only on assigned days, with Neufville watching from under a coconut tree as the children played. Failure to follow her rules meant losing beach privileges for a month.

CENTRAL TO DAILY LIFE

Walker, who was born in 1957, remembers the beach as central to daily life in Long Bay during the 1950s and 1960s. She recalled residents from Windsor Forest, Hartford and Commodore gathering seawater to preserve coconut oil during processing.

“We had a little house with a cellar, so on their way to the post office, they would put their pan under the cellar… on their way back [they would retrieve their pans] and go to the seaside and to pick up their seawater,” she said.

Her sister, Phyllis Byfield, fondly remembers visiting a small pond near the beach–sometimes called the basin or round hole – which appears and disappears depending on the tide. She also recalls schoolchildren from neighbouring communities being sent by their parents to collect seawater on their way home for coconut-oil processing.

Periodic trespassing prompted Neufville to formalise the arrangement by donating the land, safeguarding the community’s access.

Her generosity was recently acknowledged by the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JABBEM), which earlier this year donated a sign marking the entrance. The organisation installs similar markers across the island to protect public beach access points.

Regional Director Wilbourn Carr said JABBEM learned that families in Long Bay had donated land to secure public access and sought to document and preserve these sites. “We decided to come over here, explore, and we found four access points over here in Long Bay,” he says, praising Neufville’s foresight.

“Because she knew that it was important for the people of Windsor Forest and Hartford to access water, to help them to boil the coconut oil, she allowed them to pass through the property and to access the beach and this is back in the ‘60s,” he pointed out.

“So, here’s a woman who was poor but had vision. She donated that land and she put up a permanent wall that tells her children, the next generation, that, listen, this access is important to the community.

“Now, this woman has passed along many, many years ago and it is her vision that her family now celebrates because here we are today telling this story,” Carr added.