The story of the Blue Haven Hotel

The Blue Haven Hotel stands on Bacolet Bay, just outside Scarborough, wrapped on three sides by the sea. Long before it was Premura's home, it was the most glamorous address in Tobago, and its story is bound up with the island's own.

A fort, the Caribbean's first pool, film stars and royalty, all on one bay.

The hotel rises from a Georgian-era fortress whose ramparts and cannon once guarded the harbour through colonial battles. That history is still in the stone, and in the view over the bay the defenders would have watched.

The heritage building, raised on the old fort above the bay.

In its heyday the hotel built what was said to be the first and largest swimming pool in the southern Caribbean, and became the island's most coveted retreat, a byword for a certain barefoot Caribbean glamour.

Evenings of barefoot glamour, the most coveted address on the island.

Hollywood found it: Rita Hayworth and Robert Mitchum escaped here, and you can still stay in the Rita Hayworth Suite. Princess Margaret is said to have spent part of her honeymoon on the bay, and the guest book carries names from John Lennon to Ringo Starr. The shore below is woven into the legend of Robinson Crusoe.

A hideaway for stars and royalty in its 1950s heyday.

After quieter decades the heritage building was lovingly restored, and today it holds fifty-one ocean-view rooms and a terrace above the bay. It has been named Trinidad and Tobago's Leading Hotel at the World Travel Awards, called the Caribbean's Premier Boutique Hotel, featured by Conde Nast Traveller, and listed among the 100 Places to Visit Before You Die.