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UWI TODAY – SUNDAY 16 DECEMBER, 2018
70
th
ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE
first Faculty to be established at St Augustine, the inheritor
of the ICTA tradition, was especially difficult, creating
reverberations which exist to this day.
Yet unquestionably the last few years have been an
exciting time of expansion—in student numbers, staff,
buildings, programmes, support services, centres or
institutes—with the campus enjoying another boomperiod
up to the onset of the world-wide depression in 2008.
Stresses and strains there inevitably were (and are) but
the sense of forward movement was palpable. Impressive
new buildings went up, such as the Lloyd Braithwaite
Student Administration Building, the Daaga Auditorium,
the Sir Arthur Lewis Hall of Residence on St John’s Road,
Engineering Block 13, and the still incomplete six-storey
Teaching and Learning Complex. While the present
financial situation is again difficult, the forward movement
is not likely to be reversed, with the continuing support of
the national government despite its own challenges, and
under the leadership of Principal Clement Sankat (2008)
and his team.
As we walk around the campus today, we can read
its history in the buildings, trees, green spaces and roads.
ICTA’s legacy is strong on the northern side, with the grand
old Administration Building (rededicated earlier this year
after a thorough refurbishing inside and out) still presiding
over the landscape. To the south the JFK Complex and the
Main Library, the creation of the 1960s, along with the many
and massive Engineering buildings, dominate. The newer
structures, erected in the 1990s or later, are to be found
everywhere, with the Daaga Auditorium perhaps standing
out particularly. Its name recalls our history: On its site,
in 1927, the ICTA Dining Hall was opened, a two-storey
building with dining facilities and kitchens downstairs, club
and recreation rooms upstairs. When St Augustine became
a UWI campus, this structure became the Guild Hall, the
centre of student activities. In the period of student activism
of 1969-70, it was renamed Daaga Hall after an African
ex-slave soldier who led a mutiny at St Joseph in 1837. The
building was destroyed by fire in 1980, and the present
Auditorium stands on the same site. And the history of
our campus going back even before the creation of ICTA is
recalled by our oldest building: the Principal’s Office, up to
1996 the Principal’s residence, is the original Great House
of the St Augustine sugar estate, built in the middle of the
nineteenth century.
For the first years of its life, the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture functioned in converted army huts. Photograph shows an early council meeting in an army hut.
Bridget Brereton is a Professor of History at the History Department, UWI, St. Augustine.
EARLY DAYS: An aerial view of the ICTA. The main building is at the centre, the new L-shaped biology building is at right (Frank Stockdale
laboratories), and the new sugar laboratories and Soil Sciences Chemistry. The Experimental Sugar Factory is in the foreground.
HISTORY
– ISSUE ARCHIVE SEPTEMBER 2010
