Fairview Great House and Botanical Garden
Restored plantation great house of about 1701 outside Basseterre, with period rooms and gardens.
Fairview Great House stands on rising ground at Boyd's, a few kilometres west of Basseterre, with views across the Caribbean towards Nevis. Built in about 1701 for a French officer, it is described as the only surviving French plantation house on Saint Kitts and passed into British hands after the island was ceded in 1713. The estate worked sugar with enslaved African labour for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the house sits within the wider landscape of Kittitian sugar plantations.
The stone and timber house was restored in the 2000s and opened to visitors with rooms furnished in period style, including a detached stone kitchen, a bath house, a chapel and an apiary. Around it are roughly two and a half acres of botanical garden planted with tropical flowering shrubs and fruit trees, where vervet monkeys are often seen. The estate is also used for cooking demonstrations and tastings of locally produced rum.
Highlights
- The only surviving French plantation house on Saint Kitts, from about 1701
- Period-furnished rooms with detached stone kitchen, chapel and bath house
- Two and a half acres of botanical garden with tropical planting
- Views across the sea towards Nevis from the terraces
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