Spooner’s Ginnery

Spooner’s Estate is located east of Cayon. The site, which affords fine views of the surrounding countryside, is rich in agro-industrial history spanning both the sugar and cotton periods, and contains the only surviving cotton ginnery on the island. Little archival evidence of the estate’s early history has survived to this day. However, a map drawn in1753 identifies Spooner’s Estate by name and indicates an animal-driven sugar mill in operation. Later records show that Benjamin Buck Greene converted the estate to steam-powered milling in the 1870’s. Around 1900, its ownership changed hands. Sendall and Wade, the new owners, became among the first planters in the Caribbean to successfully change from sugar to cotton. In 1901, they installed the first ginnery on St. Kitts. Spooner’s Ginnery continued to operate until the 1970’s when the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis acquired the property. What remains today are structures and ruins from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries representing three major periods in the agro-industrial history of St. Kitts and Nevis.