Colonial Countryside | Edited by Corinne Fowler

Colonial Countryside is a book of commissioned poems and short stories produced by ten global majority writers featuring National Trust houses with significant colonial histories. This includes properties whose owners engaged in the slavery business, in colonial administration or who were involved with the East India Company or British rule in India.

Historians have accompanied these pieces with commentaries detailing the evidence upon which each creative commission was based. The book ends with a photo essay by the project’s commissioned photographer, Ingrid Pollard, the Turner Prize shortlisted artist who has pioneered critical interventions into the supposed whiteness of the British countryside.

Peter Kalu’s story gives an account of Richard Watt of Speke Hall reflecting on his Jamaican experiences; Karen Onojaife’s story is set in Charlecote Park where a once-favoured Black page finds himself cut adrift; Jacqueline Crooks’ magical realist tale brings together an abused Indian princess and enslaved African employed in the mahogany trade; Ayanna Lloyd Banwo has written about Diego, the Spanish-speaking African who became Drake’s closest confidante; Mahsuda Snaith’s short story cycle tracks the cross-currents of empire across Lord Curzon’s Kedleston Hall; Maria Thomas’s account of Penrhyn Castle links past and present. It is a gothic tale of history biting back. Malachi’s story features a young Black man who dates a white girl with a taste for country house visiting, including Calke Abbey. Other contributions include poetic meditations on artefacts to be found in country houses. Hannah Lowe reflects on the taste for Chinoiserie, Seni Seneviratne gives voice to the enslaved children trapped within the frames of 18 th century art and Andre Bagoo makes connections between William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park and two stands featuring kneeling African men, brought to the house by his uncle in the seventeenth century.

The cover photograph is by Ingrid Pollard.

Professor Corinne Fowler is a research expert at the University of Leicester, and is Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. Professor Corinne Fowler is an expert in the legacies of colonialism and postcolonialism to literature, heritage and representations of British history. She co-founded and led the Centre for New Writing for 6 years, where she bought together writers and researchers to commission over 100 creative works. As a former teacher, Corinne combined teaching and research to create 'Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted', a child-led history and writing project supported by a panel of experts in British imperial history and funded by Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery. Colonial Countryside worked with 100 Primary pupils in England and Wales to explore National Trust houses' connections to empire. It also commissioned 10 creative pieces, to be published in an illustrated book by Peepal Tree. The project also produced curriculum change in 63 schools, which now study materials produced by a history teacher called Dan Lyndon Cohen. Lyndon Cohen's materials have allowed thousands of pupils to access the history of empire and to understand how colonialism shaped their local cities, towns and counties. The Colonial Countryside project also enabled 11 historic houses to address their African, Caribbean and East India Company connections. These included Penrhyn Castle, funded by Clarendon sugar plantations in Jamaica and Basildon Park, bought and built with East India Company money by Sir Francis Sykes.