Barbados and Stroud and Stroud and Barbados
At the solstice, on the longest day of the year,
I traced long lines across the Atlantic archipelago
From Stroud to Africa, from Africa to Barbados,
And from Barbados to Stroud railway station.
I visited Risée Chaderton-Charles’ exhibition:
Caribbean Atlantean at Stroud Valley Arts,
A multi-layered fusion of art and archive
A ‘visual voyage’ to commemorate
Those kidnapped Africans who chose death in the carmine deep
Rather than enslavement in the plantations.
I exchanged emails and ideas with Risée,
Before discussing with Jo Leahy at SVA
How we could artistically collaborate
On presenting the history of our railways.
And when I got home, I dug out my notebooks:
The 1835 Prospectus for the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway:
‘Cheltenham and its Vicinity, embracing not only a large resident population, but also a constantly varying population of Visitors, to a great extent.’
Cheltenham and its spa attractions:
Home to so many enslavers and visited by so many too;
The records show how many were ‘compensated’ in 1834 –
But those records do not always tell the whole story:
Charles F. Sage became chairman of the Cheltenham & Great Western Union Railway,
A member of the plantocracy, he briefly owned Bennett’s estate in Barbados,
Married Frances Gibbes and they had three children there,
Before selling the estate four years before abolition;
Apart from the railway, he also became a partner in the Great Western Cotton Company;
He didn’t die anonymously pursued by sharks in the wake,
But lived to a ripe old age and left a fortune.
Reimagining how the Railway Lies
The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:
Lines of steel stretch to vanishing point, Where pale-skinned navvies with pick and shovel,
Work their way through the nineteenth century. But, wait until the steam clouds dissipate,
See how that express train changes shape –A slave ship on the Middle Passage,
Sharks following in its crimson wake. The station, now a sugar plantation,
Manacles and shackles in the waiting room, Signal gantries now high gallows –
For the bounty paid to slave owners, when slavery was abolished in 1834,
Helped fuel the Railway Mania in its wake.
The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:
Lines of steal and steel stretch to revelation point:
A colonial landscape all along the line,
That is how the railway lies.