Plymouth is the only capital in the world that nobody lives in
Plymouth is still, on paper, the capital of Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean. But since 1997 it has been an ash-covered ghost town, buried by the Soufrière Hills volcano, and the government runs things from the northern town of Brades while a new capital rises at Little Bay.
Plymouth was laid out in the Georgian era on old lava flows below a volcano that had been quiet for centuries. For generations it was the island's only port of entry, home to around 4,000 people and nearly every shop and service. Its St. Anthony's Church, founded in 1636, may have been named less for the saint than for Governor Anthony Brisket, who raised the money to build it. Hurricanes and earthquakes forced repeated rebuilding, and Hurricane Hugo in 1989 smashed the harbour's stone jetty and wrecked the island's only hospital.
Then, on 18 July 1995, the volcano woke. Ash began falling on the capital, and residents were evacuated in August and again in December before being allowed back. In April 1996, as hot ash and pyroclastic flows intensified, Plymouth was cleared for the third and final time, the Royal Navy helping to carry people to safety. The island was divided into risk zones, with the whole southern half declared off-limits.
On 25 June 1997 a huge eruption sent surges that killed 19 people and almost reached the airport on the east coast. In early August another series of blasts destroyed about 80 percent of the town and buried it under 1.4 metres of ash. The deposits set almost as hard as concrete, and clearing them would have needed explosives and bulldozers on a ruinous scale, over soil likely scorched beyond farming.
The loss gutted Montserrat. Two-thirds of the population left between 1995 and 2000, many settling in Britain, and by 1997 fewer than 1,200 people remained. A new airport opened in the north in 2005, and numbers have recovered to nearly 5,000. Since about 2015, crews have been allowed into Plymouth by day to dig sand and gravel.
Source: Plymouth, Montserrat
