It is a his­toric house, which is now in dire need of re­pair.

Lopinot House, which serves as a re­minder of this coun­try’s plan­ta­tion and slave era, is still stand­ing but the struc­ture’s in­tegri­ty is slow­ly crum­bling.

How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries said it is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a scope of the works nec­es­sary to re­store the for­mer mu­se­um at the Lopinot His­tor­i­cal Com­plex known as Lopinot House.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Con­ser­va­tor of Forests Den­ny Dipchands­ingh said the analy­sis is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed this year, how­ev­er, he could not say for cer­tain when any re­pair works would com­mence.

He prof­fered that it may be­gin in the fol­low­ing fi­nan­cial year.

The mu­se­um at the com­plex was housed in what is be­lieved to have been the La Re­con­nais­sance Es­tate man­ag­er’s home built in 1806.

How­ev­er, af­ter 200 years, the struc­ture’s roof need­ed to be re­placed in 2008-2009.

Dipchands­ingh said this was the source of the cur­rent is­sue.

“There was a his­tor­i­cal restora­tion unit un­der the Min­istry of Works, they were the ones who had done that work. It was done by some pro­fes­sion­als...the build­ing it­self is an earth­en kind of Tapia struc­ture so it ob­vi­ous­ly could not take the weight (of the new roof)...it de­vel­oped cracks over the years,” he ex­plained.

Cracks be­gan to de­vel­op and parts of the new roof be­gan to col­lapse.

Three years ago, the struc­ture was deemed un­safe and the mu­se­um re­lo­cat­ed to the near­by jail­house on the es­tate.

Some of the arte­facts and ex­hibits were, how­ev­er, kept in stor­age.

Asked why it took three years for the min­istry to act, Dipchands­ingh said: “It was one of the sites ear­marked to go un­der the TDC (Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny). But then TDC came and be­came dis­solved...so our fund­ing for it didn’t come through at that point.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site on Thurs­day and spoke to Mar­tin Gomez who was one of the work­ers who helped cre­ate the mu­se­um.

He was one of the first fore­men of the com­plex and ded­i­cat­ed some 30 years of his life to the es­tate.

He lament­ed the con­di­tion of the mu­se­um af­ter giv­ing us an al­most half-hour les­son on the his­to­ry of the es­tate and his time there.

Gomez said: “To me, that place is very run down. It’s not ap­peal­ing as how it was.”

To res­i­dents of Lopinot, like Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil pres­i­dent Athana­sius Gu­vera, it’s a place they are proud of.

“This is the thing that bring all the peo­ple and make Lopinot get on the map. Trinidad and To­ba­go, as a mat­ter of fact, get on the map through this her­itage site. Any­body com­ing to Lopinot, they com­ing to come here.”