[2] The district is second only in size to Blue Hill, and includes the settlement of Hutt's Gate, with its St Matthew's church.

[3] On leaving the University of Oxford, in 1676, Edmond Halley visited Saint Helena and set up an observatory with a 24-foot-long (7.3 m) aerial telescope with the intention of studying stars from the Southern Hemisphere.

Having returned to England in 1678, Halley published Catalogus Stellarum Australium in 1679, which included details of 341 southern stars.

In 1686, Halley published the second part of the results from his Helenian expedition, being a paper and chart on trade winds and monsoons.

Future Astronomer Nevil Maskelyne visited Saint Helena in 1761 to observe a transit of Venus and built an observatory near the site of Halley's from the previous century.