The Spring was an 18th-century sugar plantation located on a sloping hillside in St. Mary Cayon Parish on the northwest coast of St. Kitts.  Sugar cane was cultivated at The Spring through the 1830s.  Today the core of the plantation lies in ruins, with the remains of the great house, windmill and other severely deteriorated masonry dependencies visible through guinea grass and strangling fig. The surrounding fields are maintained by local farmers for the cultivation of vegetables and small herds of livestock.

In 1832, on the eve of emancipation, 77 enslaved Africans worked and lived at The Spring. A two-day shovel-test-pit survey was conducted at the site of the village by archaeologists affiliated with The St. Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative.  The following pages provide a historical overview of the plantation. The archaeological data from the survey can be found on The Spring’s archaeological sites pages and can be accessed through the Query the Database section of this website. Access to 18th and 19th century documents related to The Spring is provided through a document query at the Query the Database section of this website.

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