Clydesdale: Old Coffee Estate and Forest Park

Clydesdale is a former coffee estate in St Andrew parish, at an average elevation of about 1,000 meters according to the licensed operator Coffee Traders Limited. Its working factory has closed, but the old drying floors and waterwheel survive inside Clydesdale National Forest Park, which is open to visitors, while smallholders continue to farm coffee in the surrounding hills.

Where Clydesdale is

Clydesdale sits in St Andrew, in what was once the separate parish of Port Royal, within the Grand Ridge that forms Jamaica's largest area of national park and forest reserve. Coffee Traders Limited, which markets Clydesdale coffee, gives an average altitude of about 1,000 meters for the property.

History

According to Coffee Traders, Clydesdale was established in the late 1700s by Dr Colin McClarty, a British doctor who had originally planned only a temporary stay in Jamaica but chose to remain. The estate was among the first in the area to grow coffee commercially, and Coffee Traders credits it with encouraging neighboring farmers to plant coffee of their own; its first exports date to the same late-1700s period. The Jamaica National Heritage Trust notes that the site was once a working coffee works, and that its barbecues, the concrete drying floors traditionally used for coffee, and its waterwheel can still be seen. The Government of Jamaica has designated the Great House and factory site a National Heritage site, according to Coffee Traders.

What Clydesdale is known for

The old Clydesdale works no longer processes coffee, but its physical remains, the factory building, drying patios and waterwheel, are among the more visible surviving pieces of Blue Mountain coffee history from that era. Smallholders still grow coffee in the surrounding district, continuing the pattern McClarty is credited with starting more than two centuries ago.

How Clydesdale's coffee reaches buyers

JACRA's November 2018 licensee list shows Coffee Traders Limited as a licensed coffee dealer and coffee works operator, the company through which coffee associated with the Clydesdale name has been sold in recent years, in both green-bean and roasted form according to its own marketing.

Does Clydesdale receive visitors?

Yes, though not as a working coffee estate. The site is now Clydesdale National Forest Park, and the Jamaica National Heritage Trust describes it as a secluded spot for nature visitors, with a river pool for swimming and a tree canopy shading its walking trails. This makes Clydesdale one of the few places on this list where the historic coffee infrastructure itself, rather than a working farm, is the main visitor draw.

Clydesdale in the wider coffee landscape

Clydesdale illustrates a pattern seen elsewhere in the Blue Mountains: a large eighteenth-century estate whose central works closed long ago, while the surrounding smallholdings it once anchored continue to grow coffee independently. That pattern separates Clydesdale from estates such as Clifton Mount or Old Tavern, which still process cherry on site under their own names.

For the wider protected area Clydesdale sits within, see Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park. For other named producers, see the estates and coffee works directory, and for the parish Clydesdale sits in, see St Andrew: Blue Mountain coffee above Kingston.