Story: Wentworth Woodhouse sits on an old colliery ground and is not to be mistaken for all the other Wenthworths scattered across the country. A once Prime minister of this country, Lord Rockingham lived in Rotherham. He ushered in the Independence of America and looked at plans to make Jamaican ports more financially lucrative. We know what this leads to. Ties that bind.
The recovery: Kedisha makes it clear with her assessment of the house that we need to make sure those threads continue to be illuminated. Inspired by the house and history, her beautiful wallpaper hangs like another of the house’s tapestries. Here though she honours the Black servants whose absences and silences are glaring amongst Wentworth’s detailed inventory and records of the Georgian era, leaving us enough space to imagine the rich details of their lives.
My thoughts went immediately to William Blake’s poem The Little Black Boy and a previous discussion I had comparing this with Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. How both Blake and Marley, poets and prophets, their songs of innocence and experience, their emancipation from ‘mental slavery’.
In the poem “The Little Black Boy” expresses his sadness and hardship of his earthly position existing as a black boy. Written around the time of the Wentworth male servants detailed would have lived at the house, this sadness I felt in thinking of their existence in the grand stately home. Later in the poem he reassures the English boy that because of the worldly suffering he has endured he is now equipped to shade him from the heat, which I feel is a beautiful coexistence and a sense of emancipation.
This space of emancipation, innocence and experience felt like a safe space to begin retelling their story’s. How their presence changes the narrative, creates new possibilities, and has legacy regardless of what is or is not recorded. Adding a new layer to their existence, one that includes them in the fabric of Wentworth’s deteriorating walls, whilst leaving space for what can be imagined.
