By Molly Groarke PhD candidate in Modern British History.
This post is part of Exploring Legacies of Enslavement: a research series, highlighting ongoing research on the legacies of enslavement.
Killerton House, Devon.
In 1944, the Acland family transferred their vast Devon estates to the National Trust. This included their family’s ancestral seat, Killerton House, an eighteenth-century country house located just outside of Exeter. Now a major tourist attraction, Killerton is visited by thousands of people annually. Recently, the team at Killerton – like many at other country houses and heritage sites around the UK – started thinking about ways of uncovering histories that have previously been hidden or ignored, including those relating to colonialism and slavery.
In 2023, I started my history PhD at the University of Cambridge. It’s a Collaborative Doctoral Award (or CDA), meaning I additionally work with an external organisational partner who designed the initial parameters of the project – in my case, the National Trust. The central objective of my PhD is to explore the Aclands of Killerton and their involvement in the British Empire in the long nineteenth century. So far, I have traced members of the family across three generations as they engaged with imperial ideas and activities in various ways: as politicians, naval officers, campaigners, letter-writers, soldiers, travellers, musicians, and colonial settlers. A key finding of my research is that family networks were integral to empire; the Aclands developed a family culture of imperial service, which encouraged individual family members to pursue a range of projects that sought to bring their values to the rest of the world.
Antislavery in the Acland family
I’ve drawn on a solid foundation of work that investigates similar links between institutions and empire, such as the University of Cambridge’s Legacies of Enslavement Report and the National Trust’s Report on Colonialism and Historic Slavery. Killerton House was a slightly different case to lots of the places explored in reports like these, as I couldn’t find much evidence that it financially benefited from empire directly. The Aclands had no major investments in imperial business and in fact the family were firmly anti-slavery, at least by the nineteenth century. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 10th baronet, was a prominent abolitionist in Parliament who associated with evangelical political circles; his wife, Lydia, had a collection of antislavery music and fundraised for missionary societies; and his brother and son, Charles and Baldwyn, were both naval officers who served on the British campaign to suppress the slave trade off the coast of East Africa.
A path in Killerton’s gardens lined with Canadian Redwood trees – an example of a plant imported from overseas territories.
Family culture, philanthropy and imperial service
These activities shaped the material and intellectual culture of Killerton House. It became a venue for hosting prominent missionaries and abolitionists, including the MP William Wilberforce and the first Black Anglican bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. A large portrait of the religious thinker and philanthropist Hannah More still hangs on the music room wall. The gardens at Killerton were filled with trees and flowers from overseas, reflecting the family’s network of explorers and sailors who brought back seeds and cuttings. In return, the family donated money to build a church in Ascension Island, paid for Bibles to be circulated in Calcutta, and funded exploration of the Niger River (to name just a few projects).
In sum, the Aclands saw significant political, social, and cultural profits from empire. They secured political advancement, made friends in high places, and obtained a window onto the world from letters, drawings, and gifts sent back by overseas relatives. But most importantly, by pursuing philanthropic projects such as antislavery or missionary work, they were able to publicly perform imperial service and promote their faith, politics, and patriotism to the rest of the world. In an era when elite rule was increasingly criticised following the loss of the American colonies, the Napoleonic Wars, and growing radical movements, the gentry Aclands refashioned themselves as devout, responsible, service-oriented individuals, fit to remain at the helm of British government.
Portrait of Hannah More, now hanging at Killerton House (NT 922269). More was a visitor to Killerton and a friend of the Aclands.
Rethinking antislavery and the country house
This raises important implications for how we think about historic antislavery. The history of British antislavery has, until recently, overshadowed the history of British slavery. Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1833 was celebrated, and sometimes even pointed to as evidence of Britain’s moral and civilisational superiority, which buttressed imperial ideologies. It’s important to recognise that while abolitionism was often motivated by a concern to end suffering, it could also be motivated by more pragmatic or self-interested goals. Members of the nineteenth-century Acland family did not believe in racial equality, and their antislavery beliefs led them to support imperial expansion. Killerton House therefore offers an opportunity to tell a new story – not of slavery and the country house – but of antislavery and the country house. Leaving behind heroic and patriotic interpretations, we can strive to tell this history in all its complexities and contradictions, and meet the demand to recognise the legacies of British imperial ambition.
About the author
Molly Groarke is a PhD candidate in Modern British History and the recipient of an AHRC funded collaborative doctoral partnership with the National Trust and the University of Cambridge. Her research explores the imperial connections of Killerton House in Devon, examining the Acland family’s involvement in the nineteenth century British Empire.