Funding to help highlight Paxton House's historic links with slavery

Three grants totalling more than £150,000 have been allocated to the body responsible for a Georgian country house near Berwick to go towards projects and displays.
Paxton House.Paxton House.
Paxton House.

The first is £90,000 from The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund for the ‘Parallel lives, worlds apart’ initiative that will explore historical slavery-related collections at Paxton House and connect 21st Century lives and African, Caribbean and other minority diaspora communities.

A funding award of £60,000 from Museums Galleries Scotland will go towards new display cases and conserving the furniture collections that will be featured in new interpretation in a permanent exhibition and trail on slavery connections.

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The Textile Society has also supported The Paxton Trust with a grant of £3,500 towards the conservation and display of the some of the 17th and 18th Century costume collection, enabling it to be displayed in this year’s exhibition and in a forthcoming one.

The trust’s activities this year also include a programme of creative engagement with children from Scotland, London and Grenada that aims to break down racial barriers, educate visitors in person and virtually about shared histories, and engage new audiences.

Ian Marrian, chairman of The Paxton Trust, said; “The ‘Parallel lives, worlds apart’ project is to bring The Paxton Trust’s outstanding archives, costume, nationally recognised furniture collections and the strong historical links with slavery in the Caribbean, particularly on Grenada, to our existing and new audiences. We are very grateful for the support awarded to help us deliver this innovative project.”

The costume exhibition, which will run from April to October, will explore the parallel lives of the owners of Paxton House from the mid-18th Century in Scotland, Europe, Virginia and Grenada and those whose lives were intertwined – the enslaved, staff, family descendants.

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The permanent exhibition that will launch in June, developed in partnership with the Descendants organisation, will focus upon telling the story of the transatlantic slave trade, life on a plantation in Grenada, how the owners of Paxton House influenced the lives of many and the fight for freedom by and for the enslaved.