The earliest information known of Hampden Estate, located in Queen of Spain valley in Trelawny Parish, is a 1684 survey by Thomas Goddard. By 1743 Hampden Estate was an established large sugar plantation with rum production starting shortly thereafter. Ca. 1753 the Estate was owned by Archibald Stirling (1710-1783) of Scotland. Stirling had high hopes that Hampden Estate would be extremely profitable, but it was never as profitable as he had expected. The British Parliament passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 quickly made the estate unprofitable.  That being the case, it was eventually sold by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (1818-1878).

The estate then came into the ownership of Dermot Owen Kelly-Lawson (1865-1934) and his wife Charlotte Mathilda Smith, he was principal justice of the peace of St. James and Trelawny. His daughter Ena Barbara Kelly-Lawson (1911-1962) married George Arthur Raymond Farquharson (1907-1985), who upon her death, inherited Hampden Estate then consisting of approximately three thousand five hundred acres. During WWI, the Hampden Wharf in Falmouth was built for shipment of the Estate’s sugar and rums. Today it is a major entry port for cruise ships, and serves as a major tourist hub. In 1955, the old boiler house, which was located at Gales Valley on the Estate, was donated by Ena Barbara Kelly-Lawson to Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, who was then Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. She arranged for it to be dismantled, block by block then transported to the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus esat of Kingston and reassembled where it is today the University Chapel, pictured below.

The Farquarson’s operated the estate producing sugar and rum until 2003 when it came under the ownership of the government owned Jamaica Sugar Co. The estate is renowned for possessing the best cane lands in Jamaica producing the highest yields. During this time its rums were exported exclusively to Europe, England and Scotland. In 2009, Everglades Farms Ltd. owned by the Hussey family, also owners the Long Pond sugar factory though not the Long Pond distillery, acquired the estate via public bid through divestment procedures of the Jamaica Sugar Co. assets. Since the acquisition, Everglades Farms has invested heavily into the estate.

Hampden Estate still grows its own sugarcane for use in both its rum production and to produce cane vinegar for the fermentation process. In 2010, Hampden Estate started aging its rums at its distillery, in 2018, the first official bottlings were launched commercially, launching a new line of Jamaican rums.