A Visit To Dyrham Park
I originally wrote this as a review on Tripadvisor, but it was rejected.
Despite having written a number of reviews for Tripadvisor I’d never read their guidelines. I now know they do not allow any review that includes personal opinions about politics, ethics, religion or wider social issues.
They also said,
Your fellow travelers want to learn about Dyrham Park, so your review should be a description of your experience. We don’t allow content that we feel is irrelevant or unhelpful.
Anyway, enough of Tripadvisor.
I’ve somewhat reluctantly become a member of the National Trust so that I can visit properties nearby, and walk around their grounds to get exercise. It’s a way to walk in the countryside, feel safe and avoid traffic.
I am reluctant because in my experience, walking around National Trust properties is depressing. It always reminds me of how the horror of what some of my ancestors suffered, is traditionally and reliably left out of the story of British heritage.
I was taught at school that Britain was a proud nation because it once ruled the waves. I was taught that Britons, according to the poem by James Thomson, shall never, never, never, be slaves.
It was made very clear that being a slave wasn’t something a Briton should worry about, and that enslaved people were inferior. Nothing was taught about the suffering, humiliation and repercussions of slavery. Nor was there any recognition of the gigantic contribution enslaved people made to the British economy. None.
Nothing much changes. This feeling is underlined when in popular culture, loud voices like LBC’s particularly divisive morning act, Nick Ferrari, push a populist agenda around colonialism whenever it crops up.
Only recently he suggested that colonialism wasn’t all a crime. Nick likes to concentrate on the good bits, even when he has to make them up.
Later, after the frankly rubbish history lessons I received at school, I discovered that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was indeed a massive crime against humanity.
That loud speakers are afforded to those like Nick Ferrari, with appalling views, delivered with such arrogant self-righteousness, is of course, a remnant of that tyranny.
In short, the historic connections those of us descended from slaves have to these National Trust buildings is not pretty, but, the connection is deep, visceral and ours.
So why don’t I feel any sense of belonging when within these buildings or their grounds? Why do I feel like an intruder? I’m subliminally discouraged by blaring right-wing media fuckwits, when a sense of shareholder might be more appropriate. I don’t know.
The walk around Dyrham was OK. But the overall house experience could be much improved. I’d like to see a large detailed statement explaining exactly how much the original owner’s wealth depended on his dealings and investments from American continental slavery.
I am of mixed English/Caribbean heritage, and in the wake of the Windrush scandal, I am sick to the teeth with the deafening silence around the enormous wealth my ancestors contributed to this country.
At Dyrham, I didn’t see any obvious declarations of the impressive contribution made to the stately homes of former investors and traders, by enslaved people. However, they did do something for those that died in the Second World War.
The enslaved gave their lives, their bodies and generations of offspring to depraved brutality and back-breaking work for hundreds of years. They were never compensated, they received no pay. Not even after slavery was supposedly over.
Where is the memorial to these poor people? It’s possible I missed it.
The experience of a visit to Dyrham felt whitewashed. The only part I could connect with was the deer park. In other words as far away from the house as possible.
But even that was a sad affair. I read that around 85 deer per year are culled to keep the deer numbers down. There are other ways to do this that are humane, that do not involve killing. But, again the National Trust seem stuck in a time-warp where the undoing of misguided tradition, the rehabilitation of cheerful bloodlust, is glacier slow.
If the National Trust can’t acknowledge loudly how properties were funded, I can hardly expect them to worry about the unnecessary execution of a few deer.
On the Dyrham Park National Trust website it says,
We work closely with members of the Deer Initiative to identify and humanely remove the deer that are not expected to survive the winter as well as those with health conditions which could spread and endanger the herd.
And then it goes onto to say in the next sentence,
Healthier meat — As a by-product of our wildlife management plan, venison is a great choice of meat. It’s a low carbon alternative to many red meats, is lower in fat and hormone free as it is not a farmed meat.
So. The National Trust state clearly that they are only killing the sick and old deer. I guess this is supposed to sound good and ensure everyone it's for the good of the deer themselves.
But then it goes onto promote healthy venison meat from Dyrham Park.
How healthy can the flesh of sick and old deer be? Of course I don’t believe the story they weave. I don’t believe that they are selling the decaying flesh of old and sick deer to the general public.
I believe they are killing the old and sick deer, but killing the young and tasty ones too. They just forgot to mention it.
But as with the depravity and criminality of the original owner of Dyrham Park (check it out for yourself), when the truth is rather unpalatable, you just repeatedly say, something else. Until everyone believes it.
Anyway — back to slavery. If we could do the maths, it’s not impossible to imagine that my ancestors could have contributed more to Dyrham, than the ancestors of any other random member of the public wandering the park on that day. Think about that the next time you can’t quite remember the words to familiar, moment-defining tunes like Buffalo Soldier, or Redemption Song.
Yet this possibility, this history is subsumed by what? National pride. In what exactly? The ability to bleed slaves dry — literally — and then a couple of hundred years later toss their descendents out without passports?
Yes, I am conflating the National Trustworthiness and the tarnished history of its properties with the recent immigration scandal surrounding Windrush. Sorry. The issues are symptomatic of the same thing. An anti-truth, hostile environment.
I read that the National Trust were doing something about recognising the minorities, slaves and LGBT contributors to British wealth, congealed as much as of it is, in these creaking buildings. But I saw no evidence at Dyrham Park. Please try harder.
