Fen Court And A Powerful Sculpture On The Slave Trade

In the City of London, not far from Fenchurch Street Station, you will find one of the City’s many little nooks and crannies: Fen Court.

As is the case with many of these open spaces, it was once an old churchyard and it also contains a thought-provoking and aptly-placed memorial. 

Fen Court 

This was once the site of the churchyard of St Gabriel Fenchurch, a small church that sat in the middle of Fenchurch Street. There is evidence of a church on the site from at least the 12th century.

It had various different names over the centuries: All Hallows de Fenchurch, St Mary Fenchurch, St Mary and All Saints and finally, from the 16th century onwards, the dedication changed to St Gabriel. 

The ‘fen’ part of the name has a couple of theories behind it. John Stow, in the 16th century, wrote that the name was related to the marshy, fen-like ground around the area. He also writes that it could come from ‘faenum’, the latin for grass because of the hay once sold here. 

As the church was slap bang in the middle of the roadway, the churchyard was located just to the North.

The church was enlarged and renovated in 1631, however, it burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666. 

Of the 87 churches destroyed in the flames, only 51 were rebuilt, St Gabriel’s not being one of them. 

The Churchyard

The churchyard of St Gabriel’s was retained and was enclosed by railings until World War Two. 

This area was very heavily bombed during the Blitz and from 1960 it was turned into a public garden.

A Monument to the Abolition of Slavery 

What is unique about the garden is that it is home today to an artwork called ‘Gilt of Cain’. 

Gilt of Cain was unveiled in 2008 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. 

It is a collaboration between the sculptor Michael Visocchi and a poet called Lemn Sissay. 

The granite sculpture consists of upright columns that can be looked at in a number of ways. They could be sugar cane, one of the main cash crops of the slave plantations in the West Indies. Alternatively, they could be a crowd bidding at an auction or a congregation at a church.

The ‘pulpit’ can be interpreted either as a church pulpit or as a slave auctioneer’s podium. The whole sculpture highlights the slave trade, as well as the forces, largely religious initially, that brought it to an end.

Extracts from Sissay’s poem ‘Gilt of Cain’ are engraved into the podium and the columns. He has weaved together the language of the City’s stock exchange with references from the Old Testament. 

Before abolishing the slave trade in 1807, Britain was the dominant slaving country from the mid 17th century. Over 3 million Africans were transported to the Caribbean, South and North America and sold, making a lot of people in London and other major ports such as Liverpool and Bristol, extremely wealthy. 

Commissioned by the City, the sculpture was initiated by Black British Heritage and St Mary Woolnoth Church.

John Newton: Slave Trader Turned Abolitionist

The reason why the sculpture has been placed here specifically is because the churchyard today is in the parish of St Edmund the King and St Mary Woolnoth. 

St Mary Woolnoth is the church that sits on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street and it has strong links to the abolitionist movement.

The rector here from 1780-1807 was a man called John Newton. John Newton was born in Wapping in 1725 and from the age of 11 accompanied his father, a shipmaster, on voyages. 

In 1748 he took his first job in the slave trade as a first mate on a slaving ship. From 1750 he captained ships, taking goods to West Africa, exchanging them for slaves, before transporting them over to the Americas and selling them. 

In 1754 he had a seizure and had to leave the seafaring life. Newton wrote about his dramatic life and in 1764 he became a priest. He became famous for his hymns and is best known today for writing the words to ‘Amazing Grace’. 

The first paragraph of which of course is : 

“Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch; like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

 Was blind, but now I see.”

The Abolitionist Movement

Driven by his faith, Newton realised how abhorrent and inhumane the slave trade was and became a key figure in getting it abolished.

In 1785 Newton met William Wilberforce and persuaded him to stay in politics rather than go into the church. He was a mentor to Wilberforce for the rest of his life. 

In 1788 Newton published his ‘Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade’ where he described and denounced the horrific conditions of the slave ships. The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade sent copies of Newton’s pamphlet to every member of Parliament.

Newton also testified in parliamentary hearings against the slave trade and gave sermons at St Mary Woolnoth. 

Newton died on the 21st December 1807, 9 months after Parliament abolished the slave trade across the British Empire. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed banning slavery outright.

In 1837 slave owners were compensated by the British Government to the tune of £20 million. That debt was only finally paid off in 2015.

If you would like to read more about John Newton and the history of the slave trade, I cannot recommend highly enough a book called The Trader, The Owner, The Slave by James Walvin. It covers the history of the slave trade through the lives of three people: John Newton, a plantation owner called Thomas Thistlewood and Olaudah Equiano, a former slave and abolitionist campaigner.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s fascinating historical sites below.