Walk down from Makola towards the sea and the streets narrow into Ussher Town, one of the oldest parts of Accra. At the bottom stands a whitewashed fort that has changed flags and names more than once.
Ussher Fort began life as a Dutch trading post in the 1640s. The Dutch West India Company built it to compete with the English and the Danes, who had their own forts a short distance along the same stretch of coast. They called it Fort Crèvecoeur, a French phrase meaning “heartbreak”.
Three European powers, one small coast
In the seventeenth century, Accra’s shoreline was crowded with rivals. The English held James Fort. The Danes held Christiansborg Castle at Osu. The Dutch held Crèvecoeur. Each fort traded with the Ga towns around it, buying gold, ivory and, increasingly, enslaved people.
The towns that grew around the forts took on their identities. The area around James Fort became Jamestown. The area around the Dutch fort would later take the name of its British owner.
From Crèvecoeur to Ussher
In 1868, the Dutch and British exchanged forts along the Gold Coast to tidy up their territories. Crèvecoeur passed to the British, who renamed it Ussher Fort after Herbert Taylor Ussher, a colonial administrator of the time. The neighbourhood around it became Ussher Town.
The fort had already suffered damage in earlier fighting and in the earthquake that struck Accra in 1862, and it was rebuilt in parts under British control.
A prison and a museum
Like other forts on the coast, Ussher Fort found new uses after the slave trade ended. For much of the twentieth century it served as a prison. Later, part of it was turned into a museum about the Atlantic slave trade.
In 1979, UNESCO listed the forts and castles of Ghana, including Ussher Fort, James Fort and Christiansborg, as a World Heritage Site.
Visiting today
Ussher Fort sits close to James Fort and the Jamestown Lighthouse, so the three can be seen on one walk. The surrounding streets are busy with fishing, trading and daily life, which gives a better sense of old Accra than any museum label.
Visitors should go with a guide if possible. Opening hours vary, and parts of the building need repair.
A name that stuck
Most people who say “Ussher Town” today have never heard of Herbert Taylor Ussher. The fort outlived the Dutch, the British and its own original name, and the only part of the story most Accra residents carry around is a colonial official’s surname on their address.
