Parishes of Grenada

Grenada Parishes
Category	Parish
Location	Grenada
Number	6

The Caribbean island country of Grenada is divided into regions known as parishes.

A parish defines a territorial unit or region that, historically, was usually an area under the pastoral care served by a local church as an ecclesiastical administrative unit (see Parish) and later used by map-makers to set boundaries to an area of land. Traditionally a settlement or village would centre on a church and later grow to become a town and then even a city. Therefore a parish has now come to mean an administrative division and is used so by several countries as the smallest unit (or lowest tier) of local government.

The differing size and shape of each parish was primarily influenced by the island's earlier history and land that was granted to the first settlers that claimed that territory during the colonial years of the island.

Two decades after Barbados was settled the French governor of Martinique, Jacques-Dyel du Parquet, purchased Grenada from a French company and in 1650 established a settlement at what was to be Fort Royal in the parish of the low lands (Ville Ft. Royal situé à Paroisse de la Basse Terre). During this time the parish boundaries where laid out.

The French cartographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703–1772) draw several editions of a chart of the island of Grenada showing the earlier French parish divisions and was published as Carte de L'Isle de la Grenade in Paris 1756.

However, by 1763 the island was under British rule and a later map of the Island of Grenada showing towns and villages and division of the island into quarters in English by cartographer Bryon Edwards (for J. Cooke's History of the West Indies) was engraved in 1818.

After a century the French capitulated to the British and formally ceded the island to Britain in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris. The English took over the churches and, as was traditional, chaples of ease and local churches were elevated to parish church status across the island, leading to the formation of new parishes surrounding those newly named churches. The six boundaries or borders of these parishes having already been well established in the mindset of the people then living simply took on the names of these churches.

The nation's capital St. George's, which is located within the parish of Saint George, and even to this day the original parishional border-lines are still well defined.

The six parishes are: Nr. Parish Capitals Land Area (km²) Population (census 2001) Density km−2 1 Saint Andrew Grenville 99 24,749 249.98 2 Saint David St. David's 44 11,486 261.04 3 Saint George St. George's 65 37,057 570.10 4 Saint John Gouyave 35 8,591 245.46 5 Saint Mark Victoria 25 3,994 159.76 6 Saint Patrick Sauteurs 42 10,674 254.14 These two islands are of the Grenadines, have the status of dependency. — Carriacou Hillsborough 34 6,081 178.85 — Petite Martinique North Village 2.4 900 375.00   Grenada St. George's 344 102,632 298.35

Carriacou and Petite Martinique Saint Patrick Saint Andrew Saint David Saint George Saint John Saint Mark CARIBBEAN SEA GRENADA

See also

• ISO 3166-2:GD