The Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich was formally the Royal Hospital for Seamen COURTESY OF THE GREENWICH FOUNDATION FOR THE OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE
Slavery might have been abolished 200 years ago, but its legacy is still alive today in the buildings around us. DAVID MILLS finds out more about the infamous trade.
A history of London is incomplete without an account of the slave trade, and people can get a taste of the city's past by just strolling around Greenwich.
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has made this possible by designing a slavery trail which snakes around what was once a major seafaring town.
Pieter van der Merwe, general editor at the museum, said: "There are particularly interesting personal slavery connections in Greenwich.
"Two well-known former black slaves had connections here.
"Ignatius Sancho, who became a composer, actor and writer, lived in one of the old houses still standing on Maze Hill and later worked as a butler at Montagu House.
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"A plaque to him was recently put on its surviving wall, in the south corner of the park.
"Olaudah Equiano, who later became an explorer and a pioneer of the abolitionist cause, is also said to have lived here."
A view of the old Deptford Dockyard in the 18th Century COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
The trail begins from the centre of the town in Romney Road at the Old Royal Naval College, formerly the Royal Hospital for Seamen, where a number of African and West Indian mariners passed through.
Records state by 1875 the hospital had treated 2,340 West Indians and 599 Africans.
Walk towards the Thames and you will reach Greenwich Pier, where you can see the site of the old Deptford Dockyard.
From Deptford, two major vessels known as the Ruby and the Diamond set sail to the Caribbean to recapture English territories which would become major slave trading centres.
Going around the Cutty Sark back towards the town centre, you will find St Alfege's Church in Stockwell Street.
Mr van der Merwe said: "The parish registers of St Alfege include baptisms and burials of former slaves.
"Its churchyard also holds a fine monument to Sir John Lethieullier, a resident who probably had slaving interests as a member of the Royal African Company. "
Heading straight on towards Chesterfield Walk on Shooters Hill, you will see panoramas of Blackheath, where numerous families and businesses which benefited from the slave trade were based.
One such company was Camden Calvert and King, which was the largest in the slave trade and at one time owned a fifth of all slave ships leaving London.
The company later transported convicts to Australia in the 1780s.
Moving across Greenwich Park you will find the site where Montagu House once stood.
Here lived the Duke of Montagu, who sponsored black people such as the Jamaican Francis Williams, whom he sent to an English grammar school and then to Oxford University to study mathematics.
Going back towards Greenwich, the final stop is the Royal Observatory, which offers panoramas of both the town and the rest of London.
To the east, you can see the towers of the City of London, many of which were built from the money made from slavery.
The Thames disappears from view past the Woolwich dockyards, which was the route taken by more than 3,000 slaving ships when the slave trade was active.
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