Whose Heritage? Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage

7 Whose Heritage? Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie Presented in this chapter are two essays, ‘Blurring Field-Box Boundaries: Documenting through Community Participation’ (Malik, 2021) and an excerpt from ‘The Transatlantic Slavery Connections of English Heritage Properties: Knowledge Transfer and Country House Reinterpretation, Osborne House’ (Edem-Jordjie, 2021). If the political events of recent history have taught us anything about heritage, it is that the answer to the question of the heritage of Britain differs radically depending on who you ask. Malik, born in Lahore, Pakistan, is concerned with connecting to a deeper, more aware self. The value of interaction with other artists to build community is what brings her back to her practice. Edem-Jordjie holds an MA in anthropology and museum practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. The essays critically challenge the heritage sector and their imperial epistemologies that remain deeply problematic to the process and practice of decolonisation. Presented is an interrogation and disruption that actively addresses the historic repression of silenced voices in our collections and across sites of heritage. Interrogating the ideas and thinking of Stuart Hall’s critique on a ’national story’ (Hall, 1999), their essays offer new possibilities to inform strategies. Both essays call for a change in the hierarchies of power governing collections management, the categorisation of cultural heritage, interpretation, and representation. This call reflects my own practice with Museum X CIC and the Black British Museum Project – a direct provocation in response to the ideas expressed by Hall and a continuum of ideas of cultural identification: ‘Black’ and ‘British’. Indeed, creating a new museum has been an opportunity to rethink, redesign, and reimagine what a decolonised museum can be in the constantly evolving narratives on cultural and nationalistic forms of identity. These essays, from the Whose Heritage? Research Residency Programme run by the Black organisation Culture&, are themselves a resistance to authority and the authoritative point of view that Hall uses as a persistent provocation in his work. It is vital to my praxis with the work I do to support emerging researchers who interrogate our own sense of self in the work that we do. The question ‘why?’ is crucial in the process and practice of decolonisation, the DOI: 10.4324/9781003092735-10 96 Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie understanding of who we are, and why stories of our histories have been constantly and deliberately erased, rendered invisible in the archive and museum collections. The authors presented here have engendered a shift in museum practice: Collections Trust has responded to the recommendations by Malik (2021) to inform a new strategy for the Management Collections framework for museums. English Heritage are working with Edem-Jordjie’s (2021) essay reports to support the online interpretation of five historic sites exploring links to the transatlantic slave trade. Hall’s persistence is a legacy reflected in the approach and methodology employed by the Whose Heritage? Research Residency Programme. To reference Bonsu: Abrogating didactic notions of heritage and culture, Hall’s critical analysis of cultural identities continues to allow us to think of the world differently; a cause of optimism not for a utopian world, but for a critical intervention in the here and now. (Bonsu, 2019) Culture&: Whose Heritage? Research Residency Programme In January 2021 I joined the team of Culture& as a consultant to manage their Whose Heritage? Research Residency Programme. Culture& is a Black and ethnic minority-led, independent arts and education charity formed in 1987 and based in London. Its mission is to diversify the UK’s arts and heritage sector through training and audience engagement. Culture&’s training arm is New Museum School (NMS). They work in partnership with arts and heritage institutions and artists to develop programmes that promote diversity in the workforce and audiences. Since 2019 they have successfully delivered New Museum School training programmes for young people to access skills and opportunities within the arts and heritage sector. In 2021 they launched the New Museum School Advanced Programme, an MA in conjunction with the University of Leicester. Students attracted to NMS come from a range of diverse ethnic backgrounds that are typically underrepresented in heritage and arts sectors. In 2020, a perfect storm of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter (BLM) impacted hugely on the lives of the New Museum School 2019/2020 cohort socially, emotionally, and economically, including their career opportunities. Whilst struggling to adapt to new ways of working under lockdown, New Museum School trainees were also looking to find ways to channel their passion and effect real change. This cohort felt frustration at the UK arts and heritage sector’s limited interpretations of objects, collections, sites, and monuments, and anger against the inequality of opportunity that still exists within the sector, preventing diverse individuals from securing sustained careers in the industry. Decolonisation practice is nothing new. The school has Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage 97 a history of the collective efforts of Black activists, scholars, and liberators – such as La Rose, Howe, Harrison, and Professor Gus John – all relentless in driving change in the decolonisation of mind and praxis/practice across education and arts for almost 60 years. The focus on Stuart Hall in the Culture& programme provided a framework for emerging researchers to test the pedagogic environment of arts and heritage institutions. What aesthetic filters and institutional conventions told the researchers where they ‘belong’ in the archives and where was this knowledge placed? Where was cultural knowledge acquired in collections and what was the value placed on cultural expertise? For example, Tabitha Deadman presented her work with Art UK, an invitation to queer the archive, to question and evoke repressed voices in art in ‘Bi visibility: Marie Laurencin and multiple gender attraction’. To illustrate the deconstructing and reconstructing of the ways that heritage knowledge is produced, I present here the words of two of these new, young researchers, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie. Blurring Field-Box Boundaries : Documenting through Community Participation Qanitah Malik Stuart Hall’s critique of museum practices and what constitutes British Heritage (Hall, 1999) questioned the power that is exercised in ordering and classifying information, thus giving it certain meanings. In this essay, I examine South Asia Collection’s (SAC) documentation and online catalogues for language, generalising assumptions/vagueness, and narratives/ values prescribed to objects and collections. I showcase how problematics of language, missing content, and misrepresentation of cultural semantics can be addressed through collaborative, respectful, and sustained engagement with stakeholders. Finally, drawing from Hall’s ideas, I highlight how heritage collections can redefine and rethink their documentation practice, research, and engagement. The SAC was started by Philip and Jeanie Millward in Norwich. It is cared for and managed by the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection Trust, whose purpose is to ‘record, conserve and promote the arts, crafts and cultures of South Asia’ (South Asia Collection, 2021). The Millwards acquired objects during travels to South Asia and UK auction houses, and now the collection is also growing through public donations. I conducted my research from March–June 2021, during which I textually analysed publicly accessible materials at SAC and visited their facilities. I conducted open-ended structured interviews with representatives from my case studies and with SAC staff. The case studies were chosen through desktop research and snowball sampling. 98 Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie Acknowledging institutional history My work highlights how collections can acknowledge institutional history and address stagnant, outdated narratives that perpetuate unequal power dynamics within the heritage collections. One of the persistent concerns with object acquisition is meticulously tracing its travels and documentation, in addition to understanding biases of the collector, as this influences the representation and narratives within records (Turner, 2016). Through the documentation and publication (on websites and social media) of collector biases and object travels, collections can offer more transparency in order to build trust with the public and communities involved. During fieldwork, I sensed ambivalence among sector practitioners regarding transparency and the regular evaluation of documentation guidelines. This can be rectified through the documentation and publication of organizational history and documentation policies. Organisations such as Collections Trust (CT) can play a role by highlighting ways that museum professionals can become more aware of reflexive collecting practice, the classification of information, and, ultimately, the kind of values the museum is upholding for its audiences. During an interview, Hannah Bentley, ex-Collections Documentation Manager at SAC related that she was responsible for revising documentation policy every two years and fact-checking object histories. This process involved referring to paper records, interviews with donors, auction house catalogues, and travel information from the Millwards (personal communication, 24 June 2021). From decolonial perspectives, of concern are contextual details of object biographies. The Museum Documentation Association, now Collections Trust, Catalogue Card Instruction Manuals from 1981 state, ‘in the case of data which you do not wish to analyse, simply record it as a block of information’. This further perpetuates the cataloguer’s bias and does little to demonstrate complex information. Enhancing object-descriptions through multiple sources is highlighted through the work of [Re:]Entanglements (2021), a project led by Paul Basu with partnerships in the UK, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Their work on ‘decolonising’ Northcote Thomas’s ethnographic archive (dispersed across University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, British Library Sound Archive, Pitt Rivers Museum, Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and UK National Archives) revealed the challenge of documenting complex information and plurality of meaning. Two points emerged from an interview with Basu that dispel the myth of neat methods: first, that improvising, building relationships, and developing a complex network of stakeholders is key as there is no single source community; and second, that being genuine, sensitive, and commonsensical can circumvent extractive relationships and the co-optation of information (personal communication, 3 June 2021). In line with Basu’s reflections, collections can ensure external research is built back into the database and acknowledge multiple descendant groups Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage 99 and communities that go beyond the object. They can explore multi-layered stories to acknowledge the spiritual, cultural, historical, and in/tangible value prescribed to collections, which must then be incorporated into documentation practice and procedures. Documenting more thoroughly Hall argues that documentation practice is ‘power to order knowledge, to rank, classify and arrange, and thus to give meaning to objects and things through the imposition of interpretive schemas, scholarship and connoisseurship’ (Hall, 2005, p. 24). Further, publicly accessible material can be generalized and vague, assuming certain ‘epistemic totality’ (Crilly, 2019, citing Mignolo and Walsh, 2018), with reductive classification systems. Museums have addressed language issues by working with universities. For instance, the Horniman’s Rethinking Relationships (Horniman, 2020) addresses issues of misrepresentation, outdated information, and lack of collection provenance, linking them to key moments in the history of the collection through workshops with stakeholders. Sustained relationships were built with both researchers and communities, which involved guiding researchers to carry out their own provenance research. Resources and tools were also provided for community members to digitally access collections and input their responses on the future of collections. Guidance and information was provided about the history, nature, and conduct of museum collecting, how terminology and context may be outdated, incorrect, offensive, or inappropriate (for example, under-recognition of a breadth of cultural groups within a community or overlapping people in various cultural groups). During an interview with J.C. Niala, the project’s lead researcher, we talked about symmetric respect and care for community and western approaches to archival collections, and conditions under which knowledge can be legally and ethically preserved, published, and changed over time. In acknowledging and seeking advice from communities on language/terminology, we can be more sensitive in documentation and representation (personal communication, 20 May 2021). There is an inextricable link between language and classification, which informs the arrangement, categorisation, and object-descriptions in paper records and their lingering shadow on the documentation trail (Turner, 2016). One of the interviewees abruptly observed that modern digital systems may retain classification hierarchy from paper documentation. Documenting complex information requires consideration of (a) non-reductive classification models that may employ non-hierarchical, non-Anglicised, less control-heavy, and more collaborative ways, (b) a phased and/or case-by-case consideration of customised protocols for cataloguing, (c) training/resources to incorporate ‘unstructured’ data into a structured database system, and (d) including multiple perspectives in documentation. By layering object names/associations and seeking advice from communities on language/ 100 Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie terminology, i.e., how it is stored, we can achieve more sensitivity in documentation and representation. New collections management software can support non-Western languages and scripts. For collection catalogues that risk aestheticising sensitive cultural and religious material and repackaging it without contextual information, museums can follow the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s approach (2022), which acknowledges inaccurate, out-of-date, and inappropriate descriptions/representations and invites public emails for their identification. The application of this approach to SAC’s initiative ‘India and Pakistan Remembered’ could benefit its in-house collections so that oral documentation functions as a free-standing project and a tool to present information. Although multi-channel digital information flow presents documentation and retrieval issues, organisations can develop tools and protocols so that engagement and research are both plugged back into the database. It must be recognized that ‘documentation is not at odds with access’ (Lawther, 2020). Rectifying inappropriate/outdated content and creating spaces for engagement Gerry Hey, Head of Collections Management Systems at the Natural History Museum, states that their ‘audit week’ allows curators to address ‘accuracy and update critical aspects of collections’ (personal communication, 13 May 2021), and CT can advocate similar approaches to other museums. Acknowledging problematic words, language, and preferred terms, flagging content, and updating and ensuring the transparency of documentation policies is crucial (Rutherford, 2021) and should be a regular practice. During an interview, Wayne Kett, Curator of Great Yarmouth Museums, outlined how he removed problematic language from the Time and Tide collection (2021 and created a terminology database for the museum. It is essential to advocate updating term-lists while retaining the object-record’s trace on the documentation system. Museums can re-evaluate what they deem valuable by giving the same importance and resources to collections that have historically been excluded from the great list of valuables. Many objects described through their physical and skill/craft attributes have been divorced from their lived spirit and history. Inspiration can be drawn from projects such as Black Artists and Modernism, ‘which seeks to forget the artistic object in favour of questioning how BAME artists feature in twentieth-century art narratives and documentation’ (2022). To engage in the broad-based ethics of co-creation, museums must acknowledge multiple descendant groups and outline ethical guidelines for collaborations. This goes hand-in-hand with honouring a community’s right to access, developing ‘radicalness of empathy’ (Christen and Anderson, 2019), and fostering voluntary, non-coercive relationships as suggested in the Making African Connections Project (McGregor et al., 2021) and Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (First Archivists Circle, 2007). Further, Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage 101 museums must adopt a values-based approach to documenting collections, similar to community archives, a process where we’re all at the table (Zavala et al., 2017), augmented by a non-custodial model of stewardship whereby the community, not the museum/collection, is the owner of the material. Some enabling steps towards this include making more under-represented histories accessible online; creating equal spaces for audiences and community researchers to provide information/context around collections; and taking flexible approaches to documentation, for example through the addition of notes-fields, additional tagging, and linking terminology lists to the collection management systems. Good examples of this approach can be found in projects such as 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object (2021) and the Atlantic Black Box Project (2022), which focus on the ‘collective rewriting’ of history through ‘story, community and conversation’ (Atlantic Black Box Project, 2022). Conclusion It is this very purposeful and engaged responsibility that will move the field toward a slow archives, whereby the products – be they records, metadata or finding aids – are no longer the focus of archival practices. What becomes central in slow archives is relationships with communities of origin. (Christen and Anderson, 2019) Decolonial approaches to museum collection documentation must go beyond the politics of representation and identity. A productive approach is keeping an open mind in our daily practice and learning through other initiatives, projects, and engagements. Our communities have a say in what values are ascribed to collections and require space within heritage collections. The museum and the archive are steeped in colonial legacy that cannot be tidied up completely. For now, we situate ourselves in their limits and re-think their possibilities as public spaces. The case studies examined above allow for the creation of these spaces. Both small and large collections must do the same in order to effectively approach, represent, and host cultural heritage from the very perspectives of its stakeholders. The transatlantic slavery connections of English heritage properties: Knowledge transfer and country house reinterpretation, Osborne House (excerpts) Edinam Edem-Jordjie In his seminal essay ‘Whose Heritage? Un-settling “The Heritage”, Reimagining the Post-nation’, Professor Stuart Hall spoke of British Heritage as a ‘peculiar inflection where works and artefacts so conserved appear to 102 Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie be of value primarily in relation to the past’ and stated that ‘to be validated, they must take their place alongside what has been authorised as valuable on already established grounds in relation to the unfolding of a national story whose terms we already know’ (1999, p. 1) . This ’national story’ helps define our national identity through the linking of objects, people, places, symbols, and images with ‘meanings about the nation with which we can identify, meanings which are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present with its past, and images which are constructed of it’ (McLean, 1998, p. 1). A lot of the things that make up this national story, the traditional myths we believe, the objects we preserve, the national heroes we revere, the places we value, etc., they all largely speak of a version of British history that Hall famously argued was built on a Eurocentric, localised ideal. Historical evidence paints a very different picture. Hall’s essay was a call for action to challenge this version of British history, to demand a reinterpretation of British heritage and our national story that is inclusive, globalised, and cosmopolitan. A call that English Heritage strove to answer through the commissioning of a project that investigated the connections between some of the country houses entrusted into their care and Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and the associated links to the history of colonialism throughout the Caribbean region, continental Africa, and the wider British Empire. Country houses – whether they are the site of a historic event, the inspiration of a piece of famous literature, or simply a beautiful home that once belonged to the extraordinarily wealthy – have, especially in recent decades, come to be seen as an important part of the British national story. Their value is placed in the belief that these places are quintessentially local and British, despite historical evidence proving otherwise. As part of the national story, these places speak profoundly about what we value and how we present our history as a nation. Historically, they have contributed to the creation of a national narrative that has largely omitted the negative and globalised aspects of our history such as our imperial legacy, leading to the Eurocentric, localised image that country houses typically portray. This is something that English Heritage is seeking to address and change. This project started with research undertaken by Professor Corinne Fowler and Dr Miranda Kaufmann that uncovered the links some heritage places have to Britain’s imperial legacy and resulted in an interim report, a book, and a joint initiative with the National Trust titled ‘Colonial Countryside’. Building on this work, this report aims to transform the online interpretation of some of the country houses entrusted to the care of English Heritage. Through the recovery, foregrounding, and reinterpretation of archival content, this report illuminates and raises awareness of the diverse, intricate, and long-standing connections between key sites of English heritage and the British Atlantic world. In doing so, I hope to make a valuable contribution to the work being done by English Heritage to dispel some of the myths embedded in the narrative Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage 103 around country houses that continue to uphold troubling legacies today, such as the idea that this country did not have a Black presence until the arrival of Windrush. This report is about showing that British history and our national story have always been globalised. The Osborne House report that follows is an example of this research. Osborne House report ‘It is impossible to imagine a prettier spot’, said Queen Victoria of Osborne House, her scenic retreat located on the idyllic Isle of Wight. With its spacious grounds and natural gardens on the coast, the house is a shining example of the country houses that have become so emblematic of England’s heritage, an opulent portrayal of the Victorian elite. However, a look behind its picturesque façade reveals hidden connections to the complex history of British imperialism, as well as some hitherto not widely known realities about the lives of Black people in Victorian England. A particular point of focus is the hidden Black presence at Osborne – not only in relation to the provenance of selected artworks and cultural objects within the collections but also to evidence of the lives and experiences of people of colour with direct links to this historic house as former visitors and residents. Through the recovery, foregrounding, and reinterpretation of archival content about Osborne House, this report illuminates and raises awareness about the diverse, intricate, and long-standing connections between key sites of English heritage and the British Atlantic world. Colonial connections With its location on the sparsely populated Isle of Wight, it can be easy to forget that Osborne House is not far from the busy British port of Southampton, known then as the gateway to the world. Whilst the house’s expansive grounds on the coast enabled the royal household to live a life of relative seclusion, its proximity to the busy port and the ease of access it afforded to the world meant that the royal household was able to easily reap the economic benefits of the ever-expanding empire, which Victoria herself saw as civilising and benign (Hibbert, 2000, p. 249). Queen Victoria’s reign oversaw Britain’s ‘Imperial Century’, so-called because of the rapid expansion of territorial governance and dominance in world trade (Hibbert, 2000, p. 249). By the end of the 19th century, the British Empire covered approximately one quarter of the world’s land surface and nearly half a billion people, which was one fifth of the world’s population at the time (Drescher, 2009; Sen, 2016). The century also saw large numbers of settlers from the British Isles migrating to British dominions such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, where British rule had severely diminished the indigenous populations (Drescher, 2009, p. 388). 104 Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie With the empire, Britain was able to establish and maintain economic dominance. It afforded Britons the ability to easily acquire raw materials such as cotton and sugar cane, turn them into goods inexpensively, and sell them freely in a global market covering every continent. This, combined with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, enabled products to be produced at a speed and on a scale never seen before. By 1851, Britain was the world’s dominant exporter and first global industrial power, producing much of the world’s coal, iron, steel, and textiles (Sen, 2016; Drescher, 2009). Every week, ships arriving to and from ports such as Southampton would be carrying merchants, traders, soldiers, emigrants, etc., alongside these goods, making Britain a very wealthy nation. At the same time, Britain relied on a system of indentured servitude, mainly from the Indian sub-continent, to staff plantations across the colonies as a substitute for the enforced labour provided by formerly enslaved Africans. From 1840 to 1870, it is estimated that over one million Indians were transported to British colonies in the Caribbean and Africa, with a smaller portion to Britain itself (Sen, 2016, p. 3). At Osborne House, for example, there were a number of Indian servants attending to the royal household during this period. Britain’s continued reliance on goods produced by slavery and the system of indentured servitude meant that, even with abolition, the country continued to rely on exploitation to generate the great wealth that financed the wars, invasions, and excursions the country undertook in its mission to become the world’s foremost colonial power by the end of the 19th century (Drescher, 2009; Sen, 2016). Queen Victoria, like many of the British elite, benefitted from this wealth, and it was used to fund the creation of properties and organisations that enriched them further. In the case of the monarch, she was able to privately invest in properties across Britain and the Americas, including the early skyscrapers in New York, which were said to have ‘helped her pennies grow’ to tens of millions of pounds (Hibbert, 2000, p. 340; Kuhn, 1993, p. 1). She became so wealthy that, unlike her predecessors, who bequeathed nothing but debts to their successors, she was the first British sovereign to bequeath private fortunes and properties to her family and successor (Kuhn, 1993, p. 20). This wealth was also used to fund the creation and renovations of Osborne House as, unlike the Crown Estates of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, it was financed entirely by the monarch’s personal funds and therefore privately owned. Sarah Forbes Bonetta It is often thought that the historic presence of Black people in Britain began and ended with Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Two frequent visitors to Osborne House, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a Yoruba orphan from Nigeria, and her daughter Victoria Davies are evidence of the contrary. Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage 105 Unique figures in British history, their stories reflect a position of privilege that most living in Victorian Britain could only imagine, whilst at the same time highlighting how absent Black women have been from the little that has been written and retained in archives about the longevity of the nation’s Black presence. Born as Omoba Aina in Oke-Odan, a village in the Nigerian administrative area now known as Yewa South in the Ogun State, Sarah was raised as a princess of the Yewa (formerly Egbado) tribe (Bressey, 2005, p. 3). She resided in Oke-Odan with her family until 1848, when she was orphaned during a war with the nearby Kingdom of Dahomey at the age of five (Bressey, 2005, p. 4). The kingdom, which is located in the area known today as Northern Benin, was an important regional power because of its organised domestic economy built on conquest and slave labour. The war left many of her fellow tribe members dead or enslaved and led to Aina being captured and enslaved by Dahomey’s ruling monarch, King Ghezo. Her royal background designated her as an important prisoner and she was spared from being sold into the transatlantic slave trading system. Instead, she was kept as a slave of King Ghezo’s court, where she remained for the next two years, until the arrival of British Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy in 1850. Forbes was visiting Dahomey on a British diplomatic mission set up to persuade African leaders to end their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, following the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act (Bressey, 2005, p. 3). On his final visit, Forbes was unsuccessful in his negotiations with King Ghezo to end Dahomey’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade and was instead presented with a number of gifts, one of which was Aina. Out of moral concern for her likely fate of execution, Captain Forbes accepted her on behalf of Queen Victoria and returned to Britain in July 1850, with plans for the British government to be responsible for her care (Wills and Dresser, 2020, p. 119). At this time, the majority of Black people in Britain were solders, domestic servants, and former enslaved Africans who had been emancipated following the abolition of slavery a few years earlier. Due to the racist beliefs that were used to justify the subjugation of Black people during the slave trade and colonialism, many Black people suffered social prejudice and lived in poverty. As a ward of the British State, Aina was in a position of privilege that most in Victorian Britain could only imagine, yet her treatment whilst she was in England would show the unique dichotomy she faced as a Black African individual living amongst the British elite. Upon her arrival in England, she was renamed Sarah Forbes Bonetta after Captain Forbes and his ship, the HMS Bonetta, much like the way that enslaved Africans were renamed after their owners. She remained with the Forbes family for a few months and, during this time, Forbes put together a proposal to present to the government for her care, describing her as intelligent, good mannered, and able to speak English fluently. He eventually won approval to present his case directly to Queen Victoria and, in November 1850, 106 Sandra Shakespeare, Qanitah Malik and Edinam Edem-Jordjie she was presented to the queen, who was said to have become so enamoured by the ‘poor little Negro girl’ that she paid for Sarah to be educated at the Annie Walsh Memorial School in Freetown, Sierra Leone, as her ward (Bressey, 2005, p. 4). She was chosen to be educated in Sierra Leone as it was widely believed that England’s climate was fatal to the health of African children due to the number of children who had died en route to England during Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. She returned to England in 1855, aged twelve, and was entrusted to the care of Rev Frederick Scheon and his wife, who lived at Palm Cottage, Canterbury Street, Gillingham (Bressey, 2005, p. 9). On her return, the queen hosted her at Osborne House several times for periods ranging from days to months. In 1862, she was granted permission by the queen to marry the Sierra Leone-born Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies in Brighton. Following her marriage, she split her time between Lagos and England and gave birth to three children. Her eldest was called Victoria Davies, named after the queen, who was also her godmother. Despite her closeness to Queen Victoria, Sarah’s family faced many financial difficulties, culminating in Captain Davies being taken to court in early 1880 on charges of fraud. Though he won, the stress of the case and their financial difficulties took a toll on Sarah’s health. In May 1880, she left Lagos for Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean, to recuperate and escape the stress. However, after receiving word that all the property she owned, not secured to her in the marriage contract by her trustees, had been handed over to her husband’s trustee in bankruptcy, her health deteriorated further, and she died of tuberculosis on 15 August 1880 (Bressey, 2005, p. 11). Upon her death, Sarah’s financial difficulties left her children as reliant on the generosity of the queen as she herself had been. Shortly after Sarah’s death, her eldest daughter, Victoria Davies, left for England to meet with her godmother, Queen Victoria. At the queen’s expense, Victoria Davies attended Cheltenham Ladies College and was later given an annuity by the queen, which allowed her to remain in England and maintain a close relationship with the queen (Bressey, 2005, p. 12). She continued to visit the royal household at Osborne House, which at this point was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s main residence, throughout her life. They were so close that when Victoria Davies had her first child, the monarch’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, became the child’s godmother. The collections A walk through Osborne House will reveal how some of its ornate furniture, artefacts, and portraits are reflective of hidden geographies that tell the story of the power of the British monarchy and its empire. The Durbar Wing, for example, which was completed in 1892 to house Princess Beatrice and her family, contains various architectural stylings and pieces of artwork that Deconstructing and reconstructing counter-narratives in heritage 107 speak to the queen’s status as Empress of India (Wills and Dresser, 2020, p. 121). Dozens of portraits of people from India line the walls of the Durbar Corridor. Some of the people depicted are named, such as Maharajah Duleep Singh, the deposed fifth King of Lahore who, as a result of the second AngloSikh war in 1848, was sent to Britain in exile (Wills and Dresser, 2020, p. 121). The corridor opens into a large room known as the Durbar Room, which was designed by Lockwood Kipling, father of the author Rudyard Kipling, in a Northern Indian architectural style. The focal point of the room is an intricate piece of plasterwork designed by Indian plasterer Bhai Ram Sing, which depicts a peacock, a significant symbol in Indian mythology. Throughout the house, pieces of artwork and furniture reveal similar links to Britain’s colonial history, such as the portrait of Prince Alamayou, the only legitimate son of Tewodros II, the Emperor of Abyssinia (modernday Ethiopia). Following his father’s suicide after Abyssinia’s defeat against the British in the Battle of Magdala, the prince was brought to England by Tristam Charles Sawyer Speedy, an army officer and explorer in 1868 (Dresser and Hann, 2013, p. 122). Similar to Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Prince Alamayou was presented to Queen Victoria at Osborne House, where she expressed great interest in him. However, this is where the similarity between Alamayou and Sarah ends. Unlike Sarah, he got to keep his name, had an official portrait painted of him, and was schooled in England until he died of pleurisy aged eighteen (Wills and Dresser, 2020, p. 122). Perhaps this speaks to the differences between how girls and boys were treated, or indeed whether it mattered if the person of colour came from a British colony or not. This portrait is one of the only connections that Osborne has to the African diaspora that is emphasised. Other depictions of a Black presence have little to no descriptions or reasons for their presence. Down the Equerries’ corridor, for example, there is a painting called The Embarkation, which includes a ‘black boy’, an ‘Arab man’, and a naked, brown-skinned ‘servant’. On a wall of the Durbar Room entrance hall, there is a portrait of a black boy dressed in what appears to be a uniform, but there is no text accompanying the portrait to indicate who this boy is and why his portrait is hanging in Osborne House. As for Sarah Forbes Bonetta and her daughter Victoria Davies, no contemporaneous portraits of them line the walls to indicate their past presence. Conclusion Much of modern Britain was built on slavery, and Osborne House, a former royal residence, is no exception to this. For many, Osborne has simply been a beautiful royal backdrop to a wonderful visitor experience, a country house known worldwide for its architectural style and opulence. However, with its colonial connections, links to British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and hidden Black presence, it is also a place that can speak profoundly about the past and who we are as a nation. 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