Rum · Maker · Short entry
Mount Gay
Rum distillery in St Lucy, Barbados, on a former sugar plantation where enslaved people were held until abolition. The company dates its distillery to a 1703 document; that is the company's claim.
Status
1703 date from a company publicity handout as quoted by UCL's Legacies of British Slavery; not independently checked.
Plantation and distillery
A Mount Gay publicity handout, quoted by UCL's Legacies of British Slavery database, gives 20 February 1703 as the first documented evidence of the distillery. The estate, then Mount Gilboa, was sold in 1747 to John Sober, who employed John Gay Alleyne as manager; according to the company it was renamed for Alleyne after his death in 1801.
The estate held 100 enslaved people in 1747, 150 in 1817 and 121 in 1832. After abolition, compensation of £2,860 9s 7d was paid to Thomas Thornhill as trustee. The distillery is one of the component sites of Barbados' tentative UNESCO nomination for its sugar and rum heritage.
How it connects
Region
- produced-in Barbados