How Penrhyn Castle’s history is linked to slavery

North Wales’ Penrhyn Castle is a stunning piece of architecture – but its beauty disguises a torrid and troubling past, says Dotun Adebayo

Penrhyn Castle
A HORRIBLE HISTORY: The Pennants used their profits from slavery to buy the Penrhyn estate

THE DEEPER and deeper we get into this monthly series in The Voice, the more and more we begin to realise that most of the great country houses in Britain constructed in the 17th and 18th Centuries were paid for by the slave trade. In other words, much of what we today call English Heritage was built off the backs of enslaved Africans. Penrhyn Castle, just outside Bangor in Wales, is a prime example. It looks like a medieval fortress set in 40,000 acres. In fact it’s mock-Norman, built and rebuilt in the early 19th Century. Behind its formidable architecture and grand interiors, the centrepiece of which is a £40 million painting by Rembrandt, its foundations hide the dark history of the family that built it from immoral profits.

Money from his plantations paid for local roads

Dotun Adebayo

If you’re from Jamaica and your surname is Pennant, who do you think you are? This is probably where your name came from. Especially if your roots are in Clarendon. Your foreparents are likely to have been enslaved by the Pennants.

What Gifford Pennant did for a living was enslave Africans to work on his sugar plantations which dominated a swathe of the Jamaican parish of Clarendon as early as the latter part of the 17th Century. Originally from Wales, he made his fortune and used his profits to buy the Penrhyn estate back home. The free labour from their enslaved workers enabled the Pennants to become one of the wealthiest and most influential families in both countries.

Freedom

Gifford’s son Edward would become Chief Justice of Jamaica and his grandson, Samuel, became Lord Mayor of London. But it was their cousin, Richard, who would inherit the plantations and the enslaved and the compensation for their freedom. Despite his links to slavery he was known as Richard Pennant ‘the Improver’ for the philanthropy he could afford in north Wales. Money from his sugar plantations paid for local roads, railways, houses, schools and the Penrhyn Quarry, once the largest slate quarry in the world, and changed the landscape of the region forever.

Yet Pennant ‘the Improver’, 1st Baron of Penrhyn, MP for Liverpool (a major slave port at the time), never set foot in Jamaica in his entire life. By now (the late 1700s) the Pennants had moved back to Britain but continued owning their plantations and the 1,000 people on them, whose fate would from now on be determined remotely on the other side of the Atlantic by way of letters and later an Act of Parliament.

In the House of Commons Pennant defended the slave trade and firmly denied that the transportation for enslaved Africans across the Atlantic was cruel. In a parliamentary address in 1789 he even argued that abolition of slavery would “ruin the colonies” and surrender “the dominion of the sea at a single glance” to others – Britannia would no longer rule the waves.

On the abolition of the trade in the British colonies on March 25, 1807, the Pennant family received compensation from the government of around £14,683 (estimated to be around £5 mil- lion today) in compensation for the freeing of 764 enslaved people in Jamaica.

A welcome gift as the building of Penrhyn Castle came to an end (they were now minted enough to rebuild it a few years later). 14 years ago, the mayor of Clarendon, the late Milton Brown, called on Wales to honour its moral responsibility by paying compensation for the legacy of poverty left in the Caribbean by enslavement.

As for the Pennant family, they are now Douglas-Pennants and had their castle seized in 1951 by the tax office for money owed. It is now run by the National Trust.

Comments Form

3 Comments

  1. | Dennis Hall

    Mr. Adebayo,
    I find these historical articles about slavery edifying and thought provoking. However, I have noticed over many years the erroneous tendency of white British commentators to confuse the banning of the slave trade and the abolition of the slavery as one and the same. Unfortunately you made the same error in your interesting article.

    May I remind you and Voice readers that slavery was abolished in Jamaica and other British colonies on 1st August 1838, not on March 25, 1807.

    Kind regards,

    Dennis Hall

    Reply

  2. | Chaka Artwell

    My family name is Pennant; and my grandmother came from the Jamaican Parish of Clarendon…
    The realisation that I am reading in the Voice about my African-Caribbean Ancestor’s enslavement on Master Gifford Pennant’s Clarendon’s sugar plantation; which dominated a swathe of the Jamaican parish of Clarendon in the 17th Century, caused me to have to look away, lost in the realisation that I was reading about my ancestors….The pain was palpable.
    When I saw the name Pennant; the location of the Pennant’s sugar plantation in Clarendon Jamaica, a huge part of me refused to read any further; fearful of personal discovery of my ancestor’s horrific abuse by the Caucasian skinned Masters and Overseers:who were known to use the whip freely whilst sexually helping themselves to the young girls and women.
    The free labour from the Pennant’s African enslaved workers enabled the Pennants to become one of the wealthiest and most influential families in England and Wales.
    Master Pennant was originally from Wales, he made his fortune and used his profits to buy the Penrhyn Castle Estate.
    I now understand why so many African-Caribbean men and women of senior years have great difficulty engaging with the awful details of their ancestor’s African-Caribbean Sugar Plantation history.
    Knowledge of one’s ancestor’s Sugar Plantation history really hurts…. even today.
    Thinking of the liberal use of the whip on one’s slave ancestors hurts.
    Thinking of the short lives of African-Caribbean slaves and the harsh; savage and brutish treatment one’s ancestors endured hurts.
    I recently read the only punishment the tough military men of the Scottish Black Watch feared was being sent specifically to Jamaica.
    The Scottish Black Watch regiment had been abused and betrayed by the English.
    However, the only thing that kept the Scottish Black Watch “in line” was fear of being sent to Jamaica; such was the reputation for savage, brutal, barbarity that the English employed to make their African slaves behave and accept their slavery to England; and to England’s Anglican Church and the City of London.
    However, I am forever historically and personally linked to the horrors of Caribbean slavery; to the Welsh Pennant family whose name my family still bear, and I must have the courage to absorb the horrors my family endured as African-Caribbean slaves of the Welsh family of Pennants.

    Reply

    • | Liz Millman

      Chaka, I was so moved to read your comment on the Pennants
      We are exploring the history of the Pennants area and the shared history with Wales and I am aware how hard this can be, Please check out the North Wales Jamaica Society and link with me – it would be good to talk – Liz Millman

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
*

Support The Voice

The Voice Newspaper is committed to celebrating black excellence, campaigning for positive change and informing the black community on important issues. Your financial contributions are essential to protect the future of the publication as we strive to help raise the profile of the black communities across the UK. Any size donation is welcome and we thank you for your continued support.

Support Sign-up