The move to Accra prompted the construction of new bungalows and conversion of the former Danish fortress, “Christianborg Castle” into the Governor’s residence and office. The Governor anticipated, ‘no difficulty in obtaining free of cost a sufficient amount of unoccupied land between Christianborg Castle and Accra (i.e. Usher Town and James Town), upon which to erect the whole of the new public buildings’ [24] and the Colonial Secretary urged the Governor to purchase any land rights necessary prior to the public announcement of the relocation, to minimise speculation and price inflation. [25] It was seen as vacant territory to be simply acquired and used as they desired.
2 View of James Town, 1880-1905, ©Trustees of the British Museum. Ref: Af,A48.141
Sale noted that most of the larger houses are ‘ill-adapted’ and, ‘of expensive construction, provided with large enclosed court-yards and numerous storehouses, yet it is rare to find a dwelling-house where the rooms are really suited to the climate’[26]. The typical large house had a substantial walled compound but with no means for rain water to drain. Sale noted that, ‘After the heavy tornadoes, this water forms an extensive puddle, green and putrid, which remains exhaling malaria for several days before it dries up’. [27] Instead he proposed a far simpler approach to construction, claiming that,
‘all that is wanted is that the houses should be well raised, freely exposed to the breeze in all directions, provided with plenty of doors and windows, and, above all, with ample verandah space. The house should be only one room in depth, and should face due south, because in this position the verandah is best shaded from the sun, and at the same time all the rooms are freely exposed to the south-west and south-south-west sea-breeze blowing in a direction oblique to the front of the house, this being better than having the front directly facing the sea-breeze, because it then at times creates unpleasanly-strong draughts through the rooms. The climate on the coast is so tempered by the rains and cool sea and land breezes that the heat is seldom great, and the spacious rooms, massive walls, and thick roofs, so necessary in Indian house-building, are quite unnecessary, and even out of place, on the Gold Coast’[28]
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