In 2016, Longwood had a population of 790, compared with a population of 960 in 1998. The area of the district is 33.4 km2. The district is second only in size to Blue Hill, and includes the settlement of Hutt's Gate, with its St Matthew's church. The district also contains the island's only golf course. The district contains Prosperous Bay Plain, which is where Saint Helena Airport and the Millennium Forest is located. There is a weather recording station in the Longwood district. Readings of temperature, air pressure and visibility are automatically taken and communicated every 3 hours.
History
Observatories
On leaving the University of Oxford, in 1676, Edmond Halley visited Saint Helena and set up an observatory with a aerial telescope with the intention of studying stars from the Southern Hemisphere. The site of this telescope is near St Matthew'schurch in the district. The hill there is named for him and is called Halley's Mount. Halley's Observatory was in use from 1677–1678. Having returned to England in 1678, Halley published Catalogus Stellarum Australium in 1679, which included details of 341 southern stars. These additions to present-day star maps earned him comparison to Tycho Brahe. Halley was subsequently awarded his Master's from Oxford and Fellowship of the Royal Society. In 1686, Halley published the second part of the results from his Helenian expedition, being a paper and chart on trade winds and monsoons. In this, he identified solar heating as the cause of atmospheric motions. He also established the relationship between barometric pressure and height above sea level. His charts were an important contribution to the emerging field of information visualisation. 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. In the 19th/early 20th centuries, an observatory was situated in Longwood village and two further observatories were erected in the Hutt's Gate area: one in use from 1892–1924 and the second in use from 1925–1975.
It was the location of Napoleon's second exile from 1815 until his death on 5 May 1821. France owns Briars Pavilion, Napoleon's initial exile residence, Longwood House and its properties, where he lived during most of his time on the island, and his original grave, but the United Kingdom retains ultimate sovereignty over these properties. Napoleon's main physician, Barry O'Meara, wrote letters describing the issues of Napoleon and his entourage while in captivity, and sent them clandestinely to a friend at the Admiralty in London.
