Hibbert House, Georgian mansion in Kingston, Jamaica.

Hibbert House is a two-story building of red Flemish-bond brick with limestone quoins at the corners and Jamaican vernacular fretwork across the front. It has a basement, an attic with dormer windows, a courtyard and several outhouses; offices occupied the ground floor and bedrooms the upper floor. Inside, a fine staircase links the two levels.

Thomas Hibbert, a wealthy English merchant who settled in Kingston in 1734, built this house in 1755 in the Georgian style then fashionable in England. When the capital temporarily moved from Spanish Town to Kingston in 1754, the House of Assembly and Legislative Council met here until 1758; Hibbert was named Speaker in 1756. Sold in 1814 to the War Office of the West Indies Regiment, it became Headquarters House, and the Jamaican government bought it in 1872 for £5,000 sterling.

The house is named after Thomas Hibbert, who lived here with his housekeeper Charity Harry, a free mixed-race woman who could read and own property; their daughter Jane was born in 1756. Hibbert left the house to his nephew, not to Jane or Charity. Since 1983 it has housed the Jamaica National Heritage Trust.

Hibbert House stands at 79 Duke Street in Kingston, near the harbour, which made it desirable as a military headquarters. The building has a basement, two main floors and an attic with dormer windows, plus a rear courtyard and outhouses. The head office of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust occupies it today.

A crow's nest or sentinel post was added to the roof in 1814, when the War Office bought the house as the headquarters of the West Indies Regiment garrison. From there the harbour and city could be watched, which is why the site suited a military command post.