The island of Mustique is privately owned and is a playground for the rich and famous. Mustique was once owned by Lord Glenconner who gave a ten acre plot to HRH Princess Margaret as a wedding present.

The history of the island of Mustique, and of the Grenadines in general, dates back to the 15th century when Spanish sailors first sighted this more or less linear group of small rocky islands and named them ‘Los Pájaros’ or ‘the birds’, because they resembled a small flock of birds scattered across the sea in flight.

During the seventeenth century the islands were renamed the Grenadines by pirates, who used the sheltered bays to hide their ships and treasure. The islands were later utilized by European planters to grow sugar cane, up until the development in the nineteenth century of sugar beet, a crop which could be grown successfully in Europe, thus dramatically lessening the worldwide demand for tropical sugar. Mustique’s sugar plantations were abandoned and eventually swallowed up by scrub, leaving remnants such as the sugar mill at ‘Endeavor’ and its ‘Cotton House.’

Today around 500 people live on the island.