Sugar & Slavery Trail

This trail explores Paxton’s collections in each room of the house and how they are connected to the Caribbean and Transatlantic slavery.

Entrance Hall

The Entrance Hall at Paxton House was one of the only rooms Patrick Home had completed.
The magnificent rococo plasterwork on the chimney breast is an important feature- completed by a local, young craftsman George Morrison. We have chosen three significant items from the collection to highlight.

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Morning Room

The Morning Room is a small private room detached from the larger public rooms- in the 18th century, often referred to as the parlour.
In this room we have highlighted two items from the collection.

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Costume Exhibition Room

This is an exhibition space within the house, formerly the servery, where we are able to show parts of our incredible costume collection. Currently on display is a selection of costume that Patrick Home wore on his Grand Tour circa 1740s-1750s.

Most notably a unique costume from the Berlin Court Carousel in August 1750- where Paxton displays the only known surviving costume.

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Carousel tunic, breeches, cloak, and lion masks –fancy dress costume worn by Patrick Home at the Carousel held at the court of King Frederick the Great of Prussia in August 1750.

German, designed by theatrical costume-makers, 1750

Silk, gold and silver threads, painted imitation leopard skin, sequins, braid, and velvet.

The Carousel held in Berlin, 1750, was one of last great European Royal performances designed to demonstrate the power, wealth, and importance of the King and his cavalry to his subjects and other kingdoms.

King Frederick II of Prussia, named Frederick the Great, held a month of festivities to celebrate the visit of his elder sister, Wilhelmine, in August 1750. Balls, concerts, opera, plays, feasts, and firework displays culminated in knightly equestrian performances where four teams competed. The events took months of preparation and rehearsals. Thousands of people watched the spectacle. Four teams based on ancient empires (the Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Carthaginians) were each led by a Prince or military figurehead with six knights, plus pages and squires.

Patrick Home, then aged 22, who later built Paxton House, was a knight in the Carthaginians team. Each team displayed their horsemanship through arranged performances to music; tilting, jousting, and various types of target practice also took place. The spectacular displays took place in an illuminated performance on the evening of 25th August and during the day of 27th August 1750.

The paintings recording the Carousel (now in the National Museum of Sweden), appear to show the presence of Black people involved in the performances as riders, musicians, archers, and performers. It is difficult to know for sure how many people involved in the Carousel were of African origin or descent. The Carthaginian team represented the Prussian idea of the North African Carthaginian Empire (814-146 BC). Patrick’s matching horse regalia is also in Paxton’s collection. This is the only costume surviving from the Carousel event.

The Paxton Trust (604c i, ii & iii)

Costume Corridor

The main hallway to the Costume Exhibition Room and the Morning Room highlights artwork from our partnership projects as well as more recent photographs from Grenada and paintings by John Benjamin.

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West Bedroom

The West Bedroom is the first bedroom visitors see on the guided tour of the house. George Home used this bedroom when he lived at Paxton. In this room we will look in more detail at the clothes press, the fireplace surround and one of the chalk family portraits.

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Alcove Bedroom

This room is called the Alcove bedroom because the bed was situated in the alcove to keep it away from draughts. In the 18th century this was a guest bedroom. In this room we look more closely at the Oval Pier Glass and the Commode Chest of Drawers.

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Portico Bedroom

The Portico Bedroom is a smaller, but lovely room overlooking the front aspect of the drive and gardens, from under the impressive portico. In this room we find a very good example of a Chippendale Junior, japanned bed cornice and other furniture supplied by Chippendale.

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Chippendale 250 Exhibition Room

This room was originally used as the Dressing Room for the Principal Bedroom. In 2023, the Trust decided to use this room to showcase many Chippendale canopies, bedposts and key pieces of furniture as part of the Chippendale 250 exhibition through the house.
Now we are able to explore pieces that have been in storage, now conserved and displayed.

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Principal Bedroom

The Principal Bedroom at Paxton House has the finest Chippendale bedroom furniture. There are many notable features in this room including a special set of painted wheelback chairs. We have selected the Lady’s writing table, the Secretaire Writing Table and the Chippendale Easy Chair to look at in more detail.

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Secretaire writing table

Maker: Chippendale, Haig & Co.

Date: c.1776

Materials: Mahogany, oak, ebony, brass, and baize

Ninian Home commissioned writing furniture to conduct business in many of the rooms at Paxton House.

Made from dark brown Jamaican mahogany and inlaid with ebony ‘stringing’ – narrow bands of inlay. Both these woods were sourced through the Transatlantic Slave Trade – the ebony would have been extracted from Africa and carried to the west coast by people who had been kidnapped and were to be enslaved. The wood was shipped across the Atlantic with the enslaved people suffering terribly in the hold during the ‘Middle Passage’ before being sold across the Americas and Caribbean. Thereafter the wood came to Europe. The mahogany came from Jamaica where it was cut down under horrendous conditions by enslaved people and likewise shipped to Europe.

There is a miniature carved guilloche moulding along the lower edge of the front and sides. The guilloche pattern looks like repeated circles. Each of the legs is intricately carved at the top and fluted along their length, to ‘spade’ shaped feet.

The secretaire drawer pulls out. Then, by pressing on a round brass ‘button’ at either end, the quadrant (quarter circle) shaped brass hinges allow the front to fold down to form the writing table, lined with baize.

The interior of the desk is called a ‘prospect’. This example has two sets of three drawers at either end, with a central long narrow drawer below five pigeonholes and a void below. Sheets of paper, inks, pens and documents could be stored in it. Each drawer has tiny dovetail joints.

The table was designed to sit against the wall, in line with the dado rail. The dado in the principal bedroom is the correct height, rather than the main reception rooms downstairs at Paxton House.

Writing furniture was common in the bedrooms of ‘plantation’ houses of east coast America and the Caribbean. This table is a superb example of Chippendale’s ‘Paxton style’ in combining an innovative form with seemingly stripped-down decoration, but on close scrutiny, exquisite detail becomes apparent. The fluted legs are similar to those on the Dining Room furniture.

The quality of construction means this furniture still functions (with the help of some recent conservation work) as it was designed over 250 years ago. It was used by both Ninian and his brother George Home to conduct their business which included managing Waltham plantation in Grenada.

The Paxton Trust 385F

Main Staircase

The essentially domestic scale of Paxton is nowhere better illustrated that in the main Staircase and Hall- here the main stair connects the public rooms with the principal bedrooms. Here, we see more ornate rococo style plasterwork by local man George Morrison.

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Dining Room

Many of Paxton’s finest pieces of Chippendale furniture are in the Dining Room- most notably the handsome sideboard and urns. This room is decorated with delicate plasterwork designed by Robert Adam.

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Drawing Room

The Drawing room at Paxton House is an exceptional room- with decorative plasterwork ceiling by Robert Adam, Chandelier by Robert Adam, French hand painted wallpaper and furniture by Thomas Chippendale Jnr.

In this room we are exploring in more detail, two portraits and one piece of furniture.

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Ante Room

An ante room is a small transitional space located directly before a larger, more formal reception area in a Georgian house. It served primarily as a controlled waiting zone where guests, servants, or visitors paused before being formally announced. Architecturally, these chambers acted as vital physical buffers that blocked cold drafts and preserved acoustic privacy between rooms. Despite their transitional nature, they were often highly decorated with artwork and fine furniture to signal the homeowner’s status and wealth.

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Bust Room

When Ninian Home died in 1795, his brother George inherited. George commissioned Robert Reid of Edinburgh to extend the house by adding a new library and picture gallery.
Robert Reid connected this new wing into the current wing.
This room connects the original architecture to the new rooms.

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Library

George Home inherited Paxton in 1795 and later inherited Wedderburn Castle shortly after. Here he found a significant number of books, paintings and antiques. He commissioned Robert Reid to design an extension for the collection and he commissioned William Trotter to design furniture for these rooms.

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Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841), George Home (1735-1820), 1820

Marble Bust

George was an Edinburgh-based lawyer who, from 1781-1806, was Clerk to the Court of Session. Aged 61, in the early summer of 1795, George Home had confirmation that his elder brother, Ninian, had been killed in Grenada. With that news, he realised that he would not only inherit Waltham estate and all that survived on it in the middle of the Fédon Uprising, as well as Paxton House and around £38,000 of debts. George took a conscious decision, that to ‘…preserve Paxton for the family…’ (18 April 1796) he would re-build the Waltham estate.

From 1796/7, George expended thousands of pounds restoring Waltham which had been damaged during the Uprising. He later described that he purchased ‘a few slaves,’ immediately after the Uprising, but no others following that. (NRS GD267/5/36, p.29, 5 April 1813).

George was an absentee owner relying on Scottish managers and overseers to run the estate. George wrote to the manager of Waltham, John Fairbairn, very regularly; their correspondence survives in the family archives. Fairbairn had first been employed at Wedderburn Castle owned by Patrick Home, from the age of 10. Examples of what George and John wrote to each other follow:

In 1801, George was pleased to hear of the improved harvest of sugar:

‘…obtained without any injury to the stock [enslaved people]. I should regret if it had occasioned the [enslaved people] to be overworked, which I hope they never will be.’ (NRS GD267/7/3 pp.26-7, Sept. 1801).

What George or John classed as ‘overworked’ is not clear. However, George instructed his manager to hire a ‘task gang’ at a higher cost as need be for additional heavy work rather than use the existing workforce. (NRS GD267/7/3/pp.28 & 35, 1 & 31 October 1801).

George did not support the abolition of slavery and benefitted from enslavement. He did not receive an income from Waltham estate for twenty years – the first payment being £500 in 1815. He therefore funded the large extension to Paxton House which includes the Picture Gallery, and the furniture designed by William Trotter through other Scottish-based income, rather than the proceeds of slavery, as these were constructed from 1811-14.

Picture Gallery (now Ballroom)

Built as the largest privately owned Picture Gallery in Scotland this is a magnificent room designed by Robert Reid as the grand culmination of the suite of rooms added by George.

In 2026, the room saw a significant transformation returning the space to a ballroom-a much lighter and brighter room with some of Patrick’s paintings and marble specimens now transformed into furniture by William Trotter.

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Stables tearoom