Wade's Green Plantation

After the American Revolution, loyalists who had backed the losing side were granted land in the Caicos Islands and arrived with enslaved people to grow cotton. Wade Stubbs received a substantial grant and built at Kew, and the ruins of what he made are the most complete of the loyalist plantations here: the great house, kitchen, storehouses, overseer's quarters and the dry stone walls of the fields, along with the buildings where the enslaved workforce lived. The venture failed within a generation as the thin soil gave out and insects took the crop, and the planters left, in many cases abandoning the people they had enslaved.

What you actually see

• The great house ruin - walls, chimneys and cisterns still standing.
• The slave quarters - the dwellings of the workforce, in the bush.
• The field walls - dry stone boundaries across the plantation.
• The abandonment - the failure that ended the loyalist experiment here.

When to go

November to May is the driest and best for walking the site. Access is arranged in advance through the National Trust rather than by turning up. Mornings are cooler; the site is exposed and the bush is thick.

Honest expectations

Access must be arranged in advance and the site is not permanently staffed. The bush has grown over much of it and mosquitoes are heavy. Interpretation is limited. The history of the people enslaved here, whose descendants make up much of the population of North and Middle Caicos, deserves more prominence than the site currently gives it.

Nearby

Kew is the nearest settlement; Flamingo Pond is on the main road.