Our colonial heritage-

These guys shovel sugar cane for six hours a day, with a one-hour break.
 
Meanwhile their supervisor stands watching them lest the machines get choked.
 
It’s all part of an heritage project to create authenticity at 
St Nicholas Abbey, a 17th century Jacobean plantation house with a rich history.
 
It changed hands in 2006 and the current owner, an architect, is determined to restore it to is original design- except behind the scenes modern German distilling equipment has been introduced and feeding the mill is one of the few processes not automated.
 
Today its high on the tourist list and its bespoke handcrafted rum has won international awards and sells worldwide.
 
Despite its name it has nothing to do with abbeys. It is a former plantation house that now specialises in bespoke handcrafted rum. It got its name from Bath Abbey where one owner was married and a nearby English village.
 
The whole house is based on an English stately home design complete with four fireplaces- never used in this tropical climate and an original Thomas Crapper lavatory. ( Hence the origin of the word “crap”).
 
Under its new ownership it has become a self-supporting heritage project branding and marketing itself with bespoke rum, like whisky in Scotland.
 
It has new claim to fame:  actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s ancestors  were among those who once owned St `Nicholas Abbey,.
Ironically among the many roles he has played was that of a planation owner in the film Twelve Years a Slave.
 
The place is worth a visit not so much for the rum but as a reminder of our past.