Drax Hall Estate

Drax Hall Estate is a sugarcane plantation situated on Saint George, Barbados in the Caribbean.

Drax Hall, Barbados

Drax Hall still stands on the site where sugar cane was first cultivated on Barbados and is one of the island's three remaining Jacobean houses.

History
Drax arms: Chequy or and azure, on a chief gules three ostrich feathers in plume issuant of the first

The estate has belonged to the Drax family since the early 1650s when it was built by Sir James and his brother, William Drax, early settlers in Jamaica. The Drax's Caribbean estates then descended with that of Charborough House in Dorset.[1][2]

By 1680, Henry Drax was the owner of the largest plantations on Barbados, then in parish of St. John.[3] A planter-merchant, Drax had a hired 'proper persons' to act in, and do all business in Bridgetown.'[4]

Legacy

An estimation by Sir Hilary Beckles puts the number of slaves to die on Drax Caribbean plantations at close to 30,000 over 200 years.[5] By 1832 there were 275 slaves working on the plantation producing 300 tons of sugar and 140 puncheons of rum.[6]

Ownership

The estate continues as a sugar plantation but Drax Hall is closed to the public, although its grounds spanning much of the eastern landscape of Saint George are open to visitors. As of 2020, the current owner is Richard Drax MP, who inherited the property from his father, Henry Walter Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1928–2017), formerly High Sheriff of Dorset.[7]

See also

References
  1. Matthew Parker. "7 The Plantation Life and Death". The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies.
  2. B. W. Higman. Jamaica Surveyed: Plantation Maps and Plans of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. p. 99. ISBN 978-9766401139.
  3. Welch, P. L. V. (2003). Slave Society in the City: Bridgetown, Barbados, 1680-1834. Ian Randle Publishers.
  4. Galenson, D. W. (2002). Traders, Planters and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America. Cambridge University Press.
  5. Lashmar, Paul; Smith, Jonathan (2020-12-12). "He's the MP with the Downton Abbey lifestyle. But the shadow of slavery hangs over the gilded life of Richard Drax". the Guardian. Retrieved 2020-12-13.
  6. "Drax Hall Estate". Legacies of British Slave-ownership. University College London. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  7. Lashmar, Paul; Smith, Jonathan (2020-12-12). "Wealthy MP urged to pay up for his family's slave trade past". the Guardian. Retrieved 2020-12-13.


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