Gunthorpe’s Sugar Factory in Ruins in Piggoffs, Antigua - Encircle Photos

Gunthorpe’s Sugar Factory in Ruins in Piggoffs, Antigua

Sugar plantations emerged on Antigua around 1650. They flourished because of unpaid slave labor. The sugarcane was processed in localized windmill-powered mills until the introduction of a centralized, steam-driven plant on Gunthorpe’s Estate. Called the Antigua Sugar Factory, it opened in 1905. The operation eventually had an extensive railway network connecting the largest plantations and also the Sugar Terminal at St. John’s port. But as the island’s economy shifted from agriculture to tourism in the early 1970s, the ASF was closed and now stands in abandoned ruins.

Gunthorpe’s Sugar Factory in Ruins in Piggoffs, Antigua

Antigua Sugar Factory, Sir Sydney Walling Hwy, Piggotts, Antigua and Barbuda

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