High Hope Estate is truly one of Jamaica's little known secrets.

With only 5 beautifully furnished guest rooms and located on 40 acres of botanical gardens High Hope offers guests the peace, tranquility, and natural beauty expected when vacationing in Paradise.

Each guestroom is furnished with English and Jamaican antiques. All have bath en suites and verandahs offering spectacular views of the blue Caribbean, and green hills of the parish of St. Ann. Turn down service is offered nightly.

The botanical gardens surrounding you provide homes to countless varieties of tropical birds, flowers and fauna. Sunrises and sunsets are spectacular and will probably find fire flies in your room at night. Peace is the order of the day.

Nearby are all the amenities you may desire including, water sports, private beach club, shopping, golf, and tennis. Our restaurant is open daily and exclusively for our guests featuring the finest in Jamaican, Continental, and Italian cuisine.

About Us:

High Hope Estate is owned by Mr. Dennis Rappaport and co-managed by Mr. Rappaport and Ms. Ludovica Gabrielli from Milan, Italy. Eight other members of staff make up the team that look after your every need. Chef Evadney has won awards for her creations that are predominately Jamaican but with an Italian influence.

High Hope Estate is a 15th Century Venetian-style villa set on 40 acres of land overlooking twenty miles of Caribbean coastline.

This historic villa accommodates up to twelve people on an all-inclusive basis - or for bed and breakfast - and offers a venue for corporate retreats and special events.

Guests may bask in the luxury of this exquisite villa where beautiful arches, cool verandahs and 12,000 square feet of elegant living space greet them on arrival. The carefully trained staff of eight including a governess for those traveling with families, spare nothing to ensure the best Jamaican hospitality and service.

Classic Design, Exceptional Cuisine:

Each room with its own private bath, reflects classic, individual design. Four have spectacular ocean views and verandahs while two face the mountains. Turndown service and nightly gifts are those little extras offered to guests.

Visitors also have the pleasure of indulging in exceptional cuisine; freshly baked breads, soups, fruit and salads are served each day, many dishes having ingredients hand-picked from the property's fruit trees and vegetable garden.

Guests have the choice of browsing through the villa's well-stocked library, lounging by the pool or in one of the hammocks. They may also choose to spend a day at the beach, just ten minutes away, or venture into Ocho Rios for shopping and a climb up Dunn's River Falls.

Elegant Lifestyles:

The design and interiors of High Hope Estate reflect the personalities and taste of the villa's previous owners.

The villa is furnished with priceless antiques accumulated by Kitty and Derrick Spence since they had the house built in 1961 at a cost of $2 million. 18th Century Moroccan harem screens, 19th Century Korean silk screens, a Steinway baby grand piano and other classic pieces adorn the entire house.

The living, dining area and two master suites are floored with buttermilk and verdi marble from Carrara, Italy. None of the amenities for gracious living were overlooked by the Spences.

Kitty and Derrick Spence:

Kitty and Derrick Spence loved to entertain and built High Hope Estate with hospitality in mind. The guest book is full of notables who have enjoyed the splendor of High Hope; Charlie Chaplin, Ian Fleming, Noel Coward, Max Lerner, Agnes DeMille, Kurt Vonnegut, Adlai Stevenson and Richard Helms, to mention a few.

Their circle of friends came from all over the world to visit in Jamaica. They also had a country estate in England, a home in Switzerland, and an apartment on Park Avenue in New York. They enjoyed the company of politicians and the literary crowd.

Kitty was a beautiful and fascinating woman. The extremes of her personality are seen throughout the property. For example, Kitty had Great Danes and Chihuahuas. She was married four times; Derrick was her last husband. Her second husband was Robert Lehman of the Lehman Brothers banking family who was one of the richest men in the United States during the mid-30s.

Kitty's grandfather was William Jennings Bryan, who was well known as the prosecutor in the famous court battle known as the "Scopes Monkey Trial"; Bryan also ran for President of the United States on the Populist ticket. Kitty's mother was the first woman appointed an Ambassador from the United States in the early 1900's; she was assigned to Denmark. It was actually Kitty's mother who introduced her to Jamaica, which Kitty came to love.

Derrick was an English gentleman whose family had a monopoly on the mining of alum in the mid-1800s for the entire British Empire. Alum was mined for dental use and holding colors fast in fabrics. While Derrick, better known as Derry, was chairman of the company which his grandfather had started, his true interest was in horticulture.

While in England, Derry worked with orchids, but upon moving to Jamaica noticed that only three common varieties of hibiscus were to be found. He established a full scale nursery, still in operation, and from the red, white and yellow common hibiscus, developed over 560 varieties of hybrids.

Today, High Hope still boasts one of the largest collections of hybrids in the world. Derry was known in Jamaica for his philanthropic work and Kitty as an eccentric, fun loving lady. She once had the pool moved from the upper level where the house sits to a lower level of the property because she enjoyed swimming in the nude and did not want to offend her guests.

Derry died and was buried in Jamaica. Kitty, who earlier was invited to be an honorary member of the Mohawk Indian tribe died of natural causes, was cremated and her ashes were scattered over the sacred burial grounds of the Mohawks in upstate New York.

Over 200 years ago, this property was the site of a retirement home for British Military officers. Before that, there is evidence that the indigenous people of Jamaica, the Arawak Indians found the property to be a useful vantage point (550 ft. elevation) ideal for observing approaching ships. It is fair to assume that the Arawaks were standing in the very place where the villa of High Hope now stands when they saw Christopher Columbus' ship arriving in Jamaica in search of the new world.