A couple of minutes' drive from the airport and pretty much in the dead centre of the island, THE VALLEY is Anguilla's only town but not a place where you'll want to spend a great deal of time. It's a functional rather than inspiring place, home to government, banks and the main shops, and with little of historic or architectural interest.

The main sight of note is Wallblake House (Tues-Fri 10am-noon; US$5), built in 1787 by a local sugar planter and one of the oldest buildings on Anguilla. The house and its outbuildings of stables and kitchens are not on the scale of plantation houses to be found elsewhere in the Caribbean - a sign that planters here were less successful - but the combination of thick-cut stone and intricately carved timber is undeniably attractive. Donated to the Catholic Church in 1959, the house proved too small for holding services and the adjoining St Gerard's Catholic Church with its peculiar cobbled stone frontage was therefore built in 1966.