Qualla: Regent, Sierra Leone

Regent, Sierra Leone: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hodroj Houssein, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before it was Regent, this place in the hills above Freetown was called Hogbrook - an ordinary name for a stream in the forest. Then, in 1812, it became something extraordinary: a town built from scratch by men and women who had been on slave ships only weeks earlier, intercepted at sea and set free on this coast. They came off the boats with nothing but their lives and a second chance, and in the green folds of the Lion Mountains, six miles east of the capital, they made a community out of strangers.

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Image: Hodroj Houssein | CC BY-SA 4.0

Regent, Sierra Leone: Freed at Sea, Rebuilt on Land

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. These were the Liberated Africans - people captured for the transatlantic slave trade whose ships were stopped by the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron after Britain banned the trade. Pulled from the holds of slavers off the West African coast, they were brought to Freetown and r...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Regent, Sierra Leone: The First Stone Church in West Africa

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hodroj Houssein, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the center of that new community rose St Charles' Church, its foundation stone laid in 1809 and the building completed in 1816 when the German-born missionary William A. B. Johnson of the Church Missionary Society arrived. It is widely held to be the first stone church built i...

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Image: Hodroj Houssein | CC BY-SA 4.0

Regent, Sierra Leone: A Diverse Town in the Hills

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hodroj Houssein, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two centuries on, Regent is a mountainous town of roughly 22,000 people, and its religious diversity - churches and mosques sharing the same steep streets - reflects the patchwork of origins that founded it. It produced figures like the economist and politician Solomon Athanasius...

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Image: Hodroj Houssein | CC BY-SA 4.0

Regent, Sierra Leone: When the Hillside Gave Way

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hodroj Houssein, CC BY-SA 4.0. The same hills that shelter Regent can turn against it. In August 2017, after relentless rain, a portion of Mount Sugar Loaf above the Regent area collapsed in a catastrophic mudslide and flood that killed an estimated 500 people, many in their sleep, with hundreds more never rec...

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Image: Hodroj Houssein | CC BY-SA 4.0