‘Barhams’
Hand printed four colour halftone screen print on Canaletto Paper
300gsm acid free archival paper
38 x 50cm
Limited edition 1/10
2025
The print references two sites; Appleby Castle and Deans Valley Dry Works, Westmoreland, Jamaica (now Abeokuta Paradise Nature Park after the African village Bekuta located on the property - Source: The Jamaica Gleaner). The Abeokuta Paradise Nature Park was officially opened on January 5, 2003 by the Nigerian High Commissioner to Jamaica, it was renamed to honour their ancestors.
Following abolition John Foster Barham made a claim (registered in the compensation commission) for 144 enslaved at Deans Valley Dry Works. Barham’s UK address is registered to Appleby Castle Cumbria.
Eldest son of Joseph Foster Barham, Whig MP for Stockbridge, 1807-32, and Lady Caroline Tufton, daughter of Sackvill Tufton, 8th earl of Thanet. In September 1832 succeeded his father to estates in Pembrokeshire, Stockbridge and the West Indies. The Barham family had owned and operated the Mesopotamia estate for over a century and ‘took a special interest in their slaves’ by inviting missionaries to educate them. However, John Barham ‘never visited Jamaica and took little interest in his property there’. (Source: Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery)
‘LOWTHERS’
Hand printed four colour halftone screen print on Canaletto Paper
300gsm acid free archival paper
38 x 50cm
Limited edition 1/10
2025
The print references two sites; The Old Library at Lowther Castle Cumbria (home of the Lowther family), and the former Lowther Plantation, Christ Church Barbados, which can still be located via Google maps by the name “Lowther”.
As I was unable to travel to Barbados (perhaps one day) so I travelled there virtually via Google maps and walked the land around the former Lowther Plantation, which is now being redeveloped into residential housing. The old plantation house can still be seen on the map, and the long driveway flanked by tall trees marks the entrance to the plantation. Although residential homes now dot the area, sugar cane still grows wild in the fields in between building sites. My screen print overlays and merges these two sites, that of the former Lowther home in Cumbria whilst sugar cane seeps through and overtakes the domestic space of the library connecting the two places by an interwoven past.