Who were Pennants of Penrhyn Castle?
IN THE late 17th century Gifford Pennant, originally from Flintshire, began buying up land in Jamaica and came to own one of the greatest estates on the island.
By the 1700s the Pennant family had returned to Britain and by the time Richard Pennant (1739-1808) became the 1st baron Penrhyn, they were controlling their Jamaican properties by letter.
As the estate grew, so did the numbers of enslaved people.
By 1805 Richard Pennant owned nearly 1,000 slaves across his four plantations in Jamaica.
He never visited Jamaica – but the money he made there helped him build his family seat, Penrhyn Castle in Llandygai, Gwynedd.
The property is now run by the National Trust which sets out clearly on its website how the baron made his money and his monstrous attitude to the people he enslaved.
In his letters, he refers to the people forced to work his land as “chattels”, grouping enslaved people and cattle under the same term.
He invested the fortune he made from them into his North Wales estate.
Money from human toil in Jamaica paid for roads, railways, houses, schools and the Penrhyn Quarry, once the largest slate quarry in the world.
As an MP and anti-abolitionist, the baron argued against ending the slave trade.
His argument failed. Slavery was finally outlawed in all British colonies between 1833 and 1838.
But, as the building of Penrhyn Castle neared completion, the Pennant family received the equivalent of £1.3m in today’s money for the freeing of 764 people enslaved in Jamaica.