SUGAR & SLAVERY EXHIBITION & TRAIL

A brand new permanent exhibition at the heart of Paxton House near Berwick upon Tweed answers many questions about the slavery at the root of Georgian society in Britain.

Paxton House boasts 18^th century interiors by two of Britain’s foremost designers, Thomas Chippendale and Robert Adam, financed by borrowings and income whilst running sugar plantations on the Caribbean islands of Grenada and Mustique.  Paxton’s owner, Ninian Home, started out as a self-made man who rose to be Lieutenant Governor of Grenada before being executed in a slave rebellion in 1795. The centrepiece of the exhibition is a specially commissioned model of Waltham, one of the plantations owned by the Home family where they grew sugar, coffee and cocoa with enslaved labour. Eight paintings of a second estate, Paraclete, painted by Scottish artist Adam Callander in 1789, give a vivid contemporary view of life on the plantation. The exhibition pulls together furniture of the highest quality made from mahogany imported from the Caribbean, ceramics, silver and clothing of the period, showing how production based on slavery was integrally linked to the fashionable life of three generations of the Home family in Georgian Britain. Ninian’s wife Penelope and other women, free and enslaved, are central to the exhibition. Exhibits also explore the daily lives, origins, culture and treatment of the enslaved people working on the plantations.

The Sugar and Slavery Trail, Paxton House’s first ever online trail, is available to view here. The trail explores each room of the house in the context of its connections with the Caribbean and slavery. We learn how the Caribbean life of Ninian Home and his wife, Penelope and the enslaved people who worked for them, influenced their choice of furniture and clothing and even the food eaten by subsequent generations. Mounting the exhibition has been a great way of using Paxton’s archives to share this fascinating aspect of the history of Paxton House and the Home family for the first time.

The permanent exhibition runs alongside Paxton House’s major temporary exhibition for 2022, Parallel Lives, Worlds Apart, which uses Paxton’s extensive costume collection to explore the parallel lives of the owners of Paxton House and their staff and enslaved workers. Original Georgian costume displayed alongside replica costume specially commissioned for the exhibition shows how people would have dressed and considers why.

Entry to both exhibitions is included in the price of a house tour at Paxton which is open every day, Easter to October. Book now.

Discover more about Paxton House’s Caribbean Connections

The Sugar & Slavery exhibition and trail were launched at our special Caribbean Connections Celebration Day on Saturday 4^th June attended by members of the public and of Descendants, a history and arts-focused group aimed at children aged 4-16 of Afro-Caribbean origin, collaborators on the exhibition. The Paxton House Trust is grateful to Museums Galleries Scotland, the Esmee Fairbairn Collections Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, The Leche Trust, and The Textile Society who made this exhibition possible.