House on James Street: Episode five - "From Ann to Sarah"

House on James Street: Episode five - "From Ann to Sarah"

In House on James Street, episode five – “From Ann to Sarah”, a free coloured woman in Bridgetown, Anne Gill opens her home to persecuted Methodists and finds herself at the centre of a political firestorm that reaches all the way to London. White mobs attack her congregation, Barbadian magistrates look the other way, and a reluctant governor is forced to answer to the Colonial Office and Parliament. Drawing on the late historian Professor Pedro Welch's 2021 lecture for the National Library Service and documents from the National Archives in Britain, this penultimate episode follows Ann Gill’s struggle from a front room on James Street to a debate on the floor of the House of Commons in June 1825, where MPs demand protection for the Methodist mission in Barbados. We hear how she becomes known in the Methodist tradition as “Sarah”, how her courage helps keep the church alive on the island, and how her story forces the British Empire to confront where it stands on persecution, slavery, and religious freedom. Produced and presented by Julius Gittens Series theme music: Ralph Vaughan Williams - "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" - US Army Strings (public domain)

House on James Street: Episode four - "Missionaries, Mobs and the Conventicle Act"

House on James Street, episode four, follows the arrival of Moravian and Methodist missionaries into an island society built on sugar, slavery and Anglican respectability – and the backlash that followed. In “Missionaries, Mobs, and the Conventicle Act”, we trace how evangelical preaching, British debates over slavery, and fears of rebellion turn Methodist missions into targets for pro-slavery planters in Barbados. As mobs destroy the island’s Methodist chapel and drive out its minister, a free coloured woman, Ann Gill, opens her house on James Street to a persecuted congregation, defying hostile magistrates, an indifferent governor and an obscure 17th‑century English law, the Conventicle Act. This episode explores how a woman marked in the records as “FC” for "free coloured" becomes the unlikely defender of religious freedom and Methodist witness in Bridgetown, and how her stand sends ripples all the way to the British Parliament. Produced and Presented by Julius Gittens Series theme music: Ralph Vaughan Williams - "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" - US Army Strings (public domain)

Sounds of Freedom III - episode 5 - "Wealth Built on Bondage" (part two)

We continue the story of how one British family accumulated and protected wealth built on sugar, slavery and the suffering of enslaved Africans in Barbados in this second part of “Wealth Built on Bondage”. British investigative journalist and author Dr Paul Lashmar joins host Shayla Murrell to explore the modern legacy of Drax Hall Plantation in St George, and how the Drax family’s fortunes remained tied to an estate stained by bondage long after emancipation. Drawing on his book “Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich and Stayed Rich from Sugar and Slavery”, Dr Lashmar reflects on apology, responsibility and reparations, and why attempts to speak with current owner Richard Drax about Barbados’s calls for atonement and memorialisation have gone unanswered. Against the backdrop of a 2026 United Nations resolution naming the Transatlantic Slave Trade the gravest crime against humanity, this episode considers what meaningful justice, dialogue and remembrance might look like for Barbados and the wider African diaspora.

House on James Street: Episode three - Free Coloured Women, Property and Power

Before she was a National Hero, Sarah Ann Gill was a woman of property in Bridgetown, navigating the brutal contradictions of a slave society. In this episode, we explore the precarious lives of free coloured women in early 19th-century Barbados. The late historian Professor Pedro Welch unpacked how these women — tavern owners, property holders, and political actors — used inheritance, commerce, and strategic influence to carve out autonomy in a rigid slave society. From the political courage of her husband during their short-lived marriage to the extraordinary influence wielded by a woman inside the Governor’s residence, we examine the complex strategies that laid the foundation for Sarah Ann Gill’s future defiance. Join us as we set the stage for the religious conflict to come—and the moment one house on James Street would change history. Produced and presented by Julius Gittens. Original music composed by Aaron Paul from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/aaron-paul-low/all-that-glitters

Sounds of Freedom III - episode 4 - "Wealth Built on Bondage" (part one)

Wealth Built on Bondage (Part One) traces how the Drax family built and preserved generational wealth from sugar, slavery and land ownership in Barbados and Dorset, and asks what justice and reparations should look like today. When protests over racial injustice swept the world in 2020, Barbados was already wrestling with its own symbols of empire, including the statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson in Bridgetown. As that monument finally came down, another story of power and privilege was coming into focus: the quiet, centuries-long fortunes of the Drax family, built on sugar, enslavement and the brutal regime of chattel slavery at Drax Hall plantation in St George. In this episode of Sounds of Freedom III , host Shayla Murrell features British investigative journalist and author Dr Paul Lashmar who explored how one of Britain’s wealthiest families “got rich and stayed rich” from slavery, from 17th‑century Barbados to a 16,000‑acre estate in Dorset sometimes called “the Great Wall of Dorset”. Drawing on his book Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich and Stayed Rich from Sugar and Slavery, Lashmar unpacks documents that reveal the modern inheritance of Drax Hall by Conservative MP Richard Drax and the international debate over reparations now surrounding it. He explained more in a talk at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. Wealth Built on Bondage (Part One) asks hard questions about inherited wealth, historical accountability and what it means to confront a past that still shapes who owns land and power today.