Update from the HPC Building Research Project…..
and an invitation to an exhibition at Lambeth Palace Library
Part of the work of the Racial Justice Group at Hampstead Parish Church involves a history project looking at the sources of funding for the rebuilding of the church in the 1740s. The reasons for undertaking the project are set out on the five posters put up for Black History Month last October. These remain on display in the church.
Our present building was consecrated on 8th October 1747 by the Bishop of Llandaff. The Trustees first petitioned Parliament for £2,500 to assist with the rebuilding but were rejected. The original church cost £1750 of which £1000 came from a legacy to the Maryon Wilson family, Lords of the Manor of Hampstead. The rest had to be raised by public subscription.
Initially some fifty persons resident in or connected to the parish agreed to subscribe sums between ten guineas and £50. Eight of them were elected Trustees at a subsequent meeting. The Trustees’ Minute Books form part of the parish records and are available online. Members of the research group are now finding out about the lives and families of these first subscribers (some 200 others joined subsequently) and what were the sources of their wealth. Was money earned from the transatlantic slave trade form some of the wealth used to build HPC?
We already know that the money raised for the building of the new church was invested in South Sea stocks
…And whereas there is at present the sums of £438.13s.4d vested in Old South Sea Annuities £155.12s 1d in new Annuities & £57.1s 2d in South Sea Stocks (LMA ref P81/JNI/199)
It is possible to discover from the research undertaken by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College, London the names of the individuals who had an economic interest in enslaved people in the British colonies. As part of the compromise that helped secure abolition of slavery in 1833 the government agreed a package worth £20m to slave owners in the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The Bank of England facilitated the distribution of the money. Those who had been enslaved or who had been born into slavery received no compensation.
Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies… We believe that research and analysis…are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery’s role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present.
Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College, London website
A second exhibition this October will give the results of what the group has found. If we discover that the profits of slavery contributed to the building of our church,as a congregation we can then consider what we might like to do in acknowledgement of this. This would be in step with the Church of England as a whole. In January Archbishop Justin announced that the Church has set up a fund of £100m to ‘address past wrongs’ of its slave trade links.
The attached photo shows the memorial in the church to Charles Duncan, who in 1759 settled as a merchant in the American colony of Virginia.
Enslavement: Voices from the Archives
An exhibition at Lambeth Palace Archives
This exhibition accompanies the Church Commissioners’ public report on historic links between Queen Anne’s Bounty (one of the Church Commissioners’ predecessors) and transatlantic chattel slavery.
Letters, books and documents from the Lambeth Palace collections are displayed to show some of the links between the Church of England and transatlantic slavery. Amongst these
are rare documents from enslaved people, contrasting views on the rights of enslaved people from within the Church, and from missionaries working in the Caribbean and the Americas. These documents also present the arguments put forward using the Church’s teaching at the time both for and against the abolition of slavery.
The exhibition runs to 4th April 2023 and can be visited 9:30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. There is one remaining Saturday opening on 1st April (extra date added), 10am to 5pm and Sue Kirby is inviting anyone who would like to join her to do so.
To find out more about the exhibition go to https://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/exhibitions/
Meet at Lambeth Palace Library, 15 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7JT at 2.00pm. Visit to the exhibition followed by tea at the Garden Museum Café, in the former St Mary’s Church.
Admission is free.
