Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine’s identity is shaped by a specific educational history centred on the UWI St. Augustine Campus. The site where the campus stands today was handed over to the West Indian Agricultural College in 1921. The college opened on 16 October of the following year as the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA). This sequence connects today’s campus landscape with a clearly dated institutional history and provides a thread for understanding the site’s cultural context.

Campus History and Architecture

The campus brings together modern architecture and early 20th-century architecture alongside valued green spaces. The Old Administration Building makes the architectural perspective more concrete: its rectangular columns are linked to a Masonic origin. Rather than looking at just one era, you can consider a design detail in a named building alongside the campus’s longer history. For travellers who take culture and the built environment into account when choosing a destination, this contrast between different periods and a distinctive individual feature offers a useful thematic reference point.

Collections on Campus

The collections also give the campus a varied cultural profile. The UWI Zoology Museum collection includes animal specimens and the Banwari Burial. A university announcement from August 2023 also identifies Banwari man/woman as one of the museum’s artefacts. The Archaeology Centre has a different focus: its holdings consist mainly of pre-Columbian and Indigenous artefacts from the Americas. Zoological specimens and archaeological evidence thus sit alongside one another without merging into a single theme.

For families and other travel groups looking to bring different interests together, this distinction offers a practical question to consider when choosing a destination: should campus history, architecture, and collections be the cultural focus? When looking for a holiday rental in Saint Augustine, you can first decide how important campus history, architecture, and collections are to your choice of destination.

More to Discover in the Wider Destination of Tunapuna-Piarco

The wider destination of Tunapuna-Piarco offers another perspective on cultural history: Mount St. Benedict is home to Benedictine monks who settled there in 1912. Three monks from the Benedictine monastery of San Sebastien in Bahia, Brazil, came to the foothills of Trinidad’s Northern Range under the leadership of Abbot Dom Mayeul de Caigny. Alongside the campus’s institutional history, the wider destination is therefore also connected with a history of Benedictine settlement.

Caura Valley is also part of this regional picture. It is accessible via Caura Royal Road, which branches off Eastern Main Road; check local road conditions before travelling. Along the winding access road through the valley, visitors can picnic or swim in the clear waters of the Caura River. Near the abandoned pumping station, Pool Number 1 and Pool Number 2 are described as popular spots for a “river lime”. Caura Valley thus adds a focus on water and scenery to the wider destination, alongside the cultural and historical perspective of Mount St. Benedict.

Discover More Destinations

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Return to the wider travel overview: Tunapuna-Piarco.