Spooner's Estate is a historical cotton and

sugar plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tobacc ...

site on

Saint Kitts Saint Kitts, officially Saint Christopher, is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the island borders the Caribbean Sea, and the eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean. Saint Kitts and the neighbouring island of Nevis constitute one ...

island of

Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Kitts and Nevis, officially the Federation of Saint Christopher (St Kitts) and Nevis, is an island country consisting of the two islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, both located in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands chain of the Less ...

, in the

Lesser Antilles The Lesser Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming part of the West Indies in Caribbean, Caribbean region of the Americas. They are distinguished from the larger islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc w ...

of the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

. Its site is located near the southern entrance to the town of Cayon in Saint Mary Cayon Parish. The estate is noted as being one of the finest examples of agro-industrial history on Saint Kitts, and contains the only surviving

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...

nery on the island.

History

The estate began as an animal-driven sugar mill estate possible around the late 17th century. Benjamin Buck Greene, deputy governor of the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the Kingdom of England, English Government's banker and debt manager, and still one ...

converted the estate to steam-powered milling in the 1870's. Around 1900, its ownership changed hands to Sendall and Wade. The new owners made history in the Caribbean, as in 1901, they installed the first cotton ginnery on St. Kitts and made Spooner's Estate one of the Caribbean's first to successfully convert from the sugar cane industry to cotton production. The estate's remains on the site today include the structures and ruins of agro-industrial technology from the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries. They represent three major periods of agricultural history in Saint Kitts and Nevis. No official restoration project or park designation of the Spooner's Estate area has occurred to date.

References

History of British Saint Christopher and Nevis Saint Kitts (island) Residential buildings in Saint Kitts and Nevis Cotton plantations Economy of Saint Kitts and Nevis Sugar plantations in the Caribbean {{SaintKittsNevis-geo-stub

History

See also

References