St Nicholas Abbey Barbados

On 11 January we decided to get out our folding bikes and to cycle to one of Barbados’ few working sugar plantations. The plan was to have nice gentle cycle across the island in the beautiful Barbados weather, visit the plantation first and then go on to the wild eastern coast for lunch. As the locals have been telling us, the weather is not as it should be here. Normally this is the start of the dry season and the grass is already burnt brown by the sun. However, there has been so much rain that the grass is still lush and green. But whilst the showers can be heavy they are generally short and its warm and so we set off expecting to hide under a tree whilst the odd shower passed.

The Jacobean Great House of St Nicholas Abbey; not a religious site
but one of the island’s oldest surviving plantations    

Two drowned rats arrived at St Nicholas Abbey having cycled through almost continuous rain. It didn’t help that the house turned out to be on top of the highest hill in the norther part of the island; not something that was clear from our very basic tourist map. Two weeks crossing the Atlantic on a sailing yacht may do wonders for one’s sealegs but it does absolutely nothing for physical fitness and for a low-lying island, as our pilot book describes Barbados, it’s remarkably hilly! However, we were glad that we had made the effort because the house and grounds were lovely and the tour was fascinating.

The Great House is the oldest surviving building on Barbados and one of only 3 remaining Jacobean mansions in the Western Hemisphere. The other 2 surviving great houses are Drax Hall, also in Barbados, and Beacon’s Castle in Virginia, USA.

Inside the shelter of the house we instantly felt at ease in the lovely drawing room. The walls are lined with cedar panelling and the room is filled with interesting items: Wedgwood tea sets, stuffed birds, local shell decorations and soft furnishings. The adjoining dining room has a large dining table made from local mahogany laid out ready for a dinner party with English Coalport china. The champagne glasses are set on a mahogany sideboard and both rooms were pleasantly cooled by the easterly trade winds because of the orientation of the house.

The ultimate in 1930s luxurious relaxation?   

The tour continued into the study and here we saw a 1936 gentleman’s chair that was regarded as the ultimate in luxurious relaxation. With a drinks table, desk, book holder and reading lamp (all adjustable), a gentleman could keep himself entertained. For ultimate comfort the back, arm and footrests could all be adjusted too and if the strain was too much for the gentleman then the footrest and backrest could be extended to turn the chair into a bed. Conveniently it was all on wheels so that it could be moved to enjoy the best views or simply wheeled elsewhere should the gentleman’s snoring become too intrusive!

Having viewed the house, we were supposed to move on to the outdoor parts of the estate but the heavens had opened again. Instead, we made a quick dash into the visitors’ centre where we enjoyed a lovely rum punch and watched a fascinating cinefilm. The grandfather of the current owner, an absentee landlord of the estate, shot the film on a visit to Barbados in about 1935. The film starts with the steamer trip out from the UK and then goes on to show the disembarkation in Carlisle Bay and shots of local island life before moving to the plantation. Here he filmed the plantation workers hard at work crushing sugar cane in the windmill followed by the liquid sugar being boiled down to make molasses. It was a fascinating glimpse into a long-gone era.

With the scene set, we were supposed to enjoy a tasting session of the aged rum that is currently produced at the property on the terrace overlooking one of the estate’s lush tropical gullies but the rain kept falling.

The tasting session continued, indoors, and we all admired the rum and the bottles, which are beautifully etched with a picture of the great house, an individual number and the signature of the people who have made it. Should you so wish, the bottles can be further personalised with your own specific message. And, as we tasted and admired, the rain continued to fall…… and fall….. and fall, delaying the last parts of the tour to the outside areas – the distillery, the sugar-cane crushing plant and the bottling area. Indeed, the rain fell for so long that many of the visitors ran out of time and had to get their taxis back to wherever they had come from. We were more inclined to wait it out [Ed: and save ourselves a drenching on our return bike ride!] and were rewarded when the rain eased enough to explore the rest of the buildings.

‘Annabelle’ the modern copper still   

The first of these was distillery where we were treated to the lovely smells of the sugar fermenting and the spirits from the distillation process. ‘Annabelle’ is a modern German still, a far cry from that which was probably here originally and certainly a very far distant cousin of the still that we had seen in São Antão in the Cape Verde Islands. But we have no doubt that the liquor she produces is of a far higher quality that that produce by either of those stills – by all accounts the taxman believes that to be the case!

Next to the distillery is the warehouse where the barrels are filled and stored and at the back of the warehouse is steam mill, which is used to crush all the estate’s sugar cane.

St Nicholas Abbey ceased operations in 1947 and all of the machinery was sold off for scrap because it couldn’t compete with sugar production in the USA. In 1983 a steam mill similar to that which had been on the property was purchased as part of a joint venture between the Canadian High Commission and Col Cave (the last of the previous family of owners of the property). In 2006 the present owners saw through Col Cave’s vision and finished the restoration and recommissioning of the mill.  It was an amazing experience watching a machine of the Industrial Revolution (quite literally) at work and, of course, enjoying the sounds and smells of it in action. The powerful mill crushes the sugar cane to extract all of the sweet syrup and it is this syrup which is then used to produce the rum on this estate, not the more usual molasses (about 70% sugar).

Close to the distillery, in one of the old outhouses, the modern-day products are finished and packaged and we were very lucky to spend quite a while talking to ‘the lady of the house’, Mrs Warren. As well as explaining how they had gone through the restoration process and got the business up and running, we also learnt quite a lot about the distillation process. She explained that in some areas of the Caribbean where there are uncontrolled (illegal) local stills it was not unusual of for there to be deaths in the villages from poorly distilled rum. We quickly decided that the small bottle of rum that we had purchased from the much less scientifically controlled still we had seen in São Antão would probably best be used to kill our [Ed: any?] fishing triumphs rather than to enhance our rum cocktails.

View down from Cherry Tree Hill    

As well as chatting about the plantation and how it was working today, Mrs Warren recommended that on our way home we should visit the nearby Cherry Tree Hill viewpoint. The area has been inhabited for centuries and archaeological finds from the area pre-date European colonisation, when the Arawak Indians lived here. Today the route up to the top of the hill (yes, more uphill cycling!) is lined with mahogany trees which were planted in the mid-18^th century. The avenue opens out onto a small plateau from which, even with the grey skies, we had fabulous views down onto and along the east coast.

We had originally planned to continue on to see the east coast up close but with more rain looking likely and having spent more time at St Nicholas Abbey than we had expected, we turned back to Port St Charles instead. One advantage of all the uphill work in getting to St Nicholas Abbey was that we hardly needed to touch the peddles getting back to sea level. And, as an added bonus, the rain held off the whole way back!

Port St Charles, Barbados