Drax Hall Estate is a sugarcane plantation situated in Saint George, Barbados, in the Caribbean.
Drax Hall still stands on the site where sugarcane was first cultivated on Barbados and is one of the island's three remaining Jacobean houses.
The estate has belonged to the Drax family since the early 1650s when it was built by James Drax and his brother, William Drax, early settlers in Jamaica. The Drax's Caribbean slave plantations and 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 the parish of St. John. [3] A planter-merchant, Drax had a hired 'proper persons' to act in, and do all business in Bridgetown.' [4]
Historian Hilary Beckles estimated that close to 30,000 enslaved African men, women and children died on the Drax Caribbean plantations over 200 years. [5] By 1832 there were 275 people enslaved on the plantation producing 300 tons of sugar and 140 puncheons of rum. [6]
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 the parish of Saint George are open to visitors. The current owner is Richard Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, a British member of parliament, who inherited the property after the death of his father, Henry Walter Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1928–2017), a former High Sheriff of Dorset. The Drax family also owned slave plantations in Jamaica, which they sold in the mid-1700s. [7] April 21, 2024 LBC Radio announced the sale of the plantation to the Barbadian Government for $3 Million Pounds.
Barbados is an island country in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, situated about 100 miles (160 km) east of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Roughly triangular in shape, the island measures some 21 miles (34 km) from northwest to southeast and about 14 miles (23 km) from east to west at its widest point. The capital and largest town is Bridgetown, which is also the main seaport.
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal and other places were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugar industry. These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe, later supplanted by European-grown sugar beet.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.
Bussa's rebellion was the largest slave revolt in Barbadian history. The rebellion takes its name from the African-born slave, Bussa, who led the rebellion. The rebellion, which was eventually defeated by the colonial militia, was the first of three mass slave rebellions in the British West Indies that shook public faith in slavery in the years leading up to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and emancipation of former slaves. It was followed by the Demerara rebellion of 1823 and by the Baptist War in Jamaica in 1831–1832; these are often referred to as the "late slave rebellions".
Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax is the quadruple-barrelled surname of the descendants of Admiral The Honourable Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1880–1967), who was the younger son of the 17th Baron of Dunsany by his wife Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor, née Burton, later Ernle-Erle-Drax (1855–1916). The surname of Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax was assumed in lieu of Plunkett, his name from birth, by royal licence on 4 October 1916. Ernle is pronounced earnly. The current head of the family is the Westminster M.P. Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, otherwise Richard Drax.
Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, KCB, DSO, JP, DL, commonly known as Reginald Plunkett or Reginald Drax, was an Anglo-Irish admiral. The younger son of the 17th Baron of Dunsany, he was Director of the Royal Naval Staff College, President of the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control in (Berlin), commander-in-chief of successive Royal Navy bases. His brother Edward, who became the 18th Baron of Dunsany, was best known as the famous playwright and author Lord Dunsany. Edward inherited the paternal estates in Ireland, while Reginald was bequeathed most of his mother's inheritance across portions of the West Indies, Kent, Surrey, Dorset, Wiltshire and Yorkshire. He extended his surname by special Royal licence in 1916, and was noted for the quadruple-name result, Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
Charborough House, also known as Charborough Park, is a Grade I listed building, the manor house of the ancient manor of Charborough. The house is between the villages of Sturminster Marshall and Bere Regis in Dorset, England.
John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany was an Anglo-Irish Conservative politician and peer.
John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle-Drax was a British Member of Parliament (MP) during the Victorian era.
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax is a British Conservative Party politician, landowner and former journalist serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Dorset since 2010.
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.
Black Barbadians or Afro-Barbadians are Barbadians of entirely or predominantly African descent.
Colonel Sir James Drax was an English planter and military officer. Born in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, Drax migrated to the English colony of Barbados and acquired ownership of several sugar plantations and enslaved people. Drax was expelled from Barbados by the Royalists because he was a Parliamentarian, but he returned in 1651 when the island was returned to Parliamentarian control. Drax returned to England, where he died in 1662. He would go on to establish a dynasty of wealthy slave owning sugar planters.
Slavery in Cuba was a portion of the larger Atlantic Slave Trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practised on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886.
Francisco de Arango y Parreño (1765–1837) was a Cuban planter and intellectual. He helped to oversee colonial Cuba's transformation into a major sugar and coffee producer in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Henry Drax of Ellerton Abbey, Yorkshire and Charborough, near Wareham, Dorset was a British Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1718 and 1755.
Thomas Erle Drax was an English Tory politician. He served as a Member of Parliament for constituencies in Dorset in the 18th century. He was the son of Henry Drax, British MP and owner of slave plantations in Barbados and Jamaica.
Green Park Estate was one of several sugar plantations owned by William Atherton and his heirs. It was located in Trelawny Parish, south of Falmouth, Jamaica. By the early nineteenth century, at least 533 people were enslaved there producing mainly sugar and rum.
Ellerton AbbeyHouse is an historic building and estate in Ellerton Abbey, North Yorkshire, England. It was built around 1830 for the Fore Erle-Drax family, and has been designated a Grade II listed building by Historic England. The property is located at the end of a long driveway off the northern side of the B6270 Richmond Road, about 450 feet (140 m) southwest of Ellerton Priory, now ruined.
Newton Slave Burial Ground is an industrial heritage site and informal cemetery in Barbados. It was used by people enslaved at the adjacent Newton Plantation. The site has been owned by the Barbados Museum & Historical Society since 1993. It has been subject to excavations since the 1970s, which have produced information regarding slave lifeways including resistance, health, and culture.