October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Writer and composer Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship. His mother died shortly afterwards in a Spanish colony in South America, and his father took his own life rather than live as a slave.

Sancho’s owner took him to England and gave him to three sisters at Greenwich. There he attracted the attention of John Montagu, second Duke of Montagu, who took the young man under his wing. Working as a butler in the Montagu household, Sancho developed his interest in music, poetry, reading, and writing. He later opened a grocery shop in Mayfair.

Sancho had his portrait painted by celebrated artist Thomas Gainsborough, corresponded with novelist Laurence Sterne on the need to abolish the slave trade, and was the first person of African origin to vote in Britain, as well as being the first person of African descent to be given an obituary in the British press when he died from the effects of gout in 1780. He was buried in St Margaret’s churchyard in Westminster.

More about Charles Ignatius Sancho at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Sancho

October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is someone else entirely) was born in London in 1875 to Alice Hare Martin. His parents were unmarried and his father Daniel Taylor – from Sierra Leone – left the UK not knowing Alice was expecting his child.

Alice named her son after the poet, and he was brought up in Croydon. Alice’s family was a musical one, and Coleridge-Taylor studied at the Royal College of Music from the age of 15 including composition under professor and composer Charles Villiers Stanford.

On graduating he became a professional musician, being appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and conducting the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire. He was also encouraged by composer Edward Elgar, and on a tour of America in 1904 met President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, an unusual event for a man of African ancestry.

Coleridge-Taylor’s most famous and popular composition was Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, and indeed when he married and became a father he named his own son Hiawatha. Unfortunately, like many composers of the day, his financial situation was far from secure and he had sold the rights to the piece outright. After his untimely death from pneumonia at the age of 37, which some attributed to the stress of his financial situation, his case contributed to the establishment of the Performing Rights Society.

Coleridge-Taylor is buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, Wallington, Surrey – now in the London Borough of Sutton.

More about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor

October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Mary Prince was born into slavery in Bermuda in 1788. As an infant, she and her mother and younger siblings were sold, and later resold to cruel and abusive owners. At the age of eighteen Mary was transported as a slave to the Turks and Caicos islands where for four years she was forced to work long days in the corrosive salt ponds. She was sold again twice, initially back to Bermuda and then to an owner in Antigua, where she joined the Moravian Church and learned to read.

Mary married a freed slave in 1826, but her harsh treatment at the hands of her owner worsened after this. In 1828 she was taken by her owner and his family to London, where she took shelter with the Moravian Church in Hatton Garden and began working with Thomas Pringle, an abolitionist and secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society.

Mary petitioned Parliament for her freedom in 1829, but unsuccessfully. Transporting slaves out of England had been made illegal in 1772, but slavery itself was still legal in Antigua, meaning Mary could not return to her husband without the risk of being re-enslaved. Mary stayed in London, where she was employed by Pringle.

Pringle encouraged Mary to write her harsh life story, and her autobiography The History of Mary Prince was printed in 1831. This was the first account published in Great Britain of a black woman’s life, and caused a considerable stir, selling out three printings in its first year.

Mary remained in England until at least 1833, the year in which slavery was abolished, but it is unclear whether she ever returned to her husband in Antigua as she had wished.

More about Mary Prince at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Prince

October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Mary Seacole, born in Jamaica in 1805, was the daughter of a Scottish army lieutenant and a free Jamaican woman. She was a nurse, healer, and businesswoman who nursed wounded servicemen on the battlefield during the Crimean War.

Mary Seacole had no formal British nursing qualifications or training, but had a family background as a healer and ‘doctress’ from Jamaica. Refused by the War Office as part of its nursing contingent, she travelled independently to the battlefront to nurse wounded soldiers.

Mary’s autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman. There is a statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas’ Hospital in London.

More about Mary Seacole at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole

The following planning applications in the Sutton division have been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.

20/01261/FUL
Mepal
16 School Lane Mepal CB6 2AJ
Two storey rear extension.

20/01259/FUL
Witchford
239 Main Street Witchford CB6 2HT
Glazed link to rear of property between existing dwelling kitchen and existing outhouse.

Further information can be found on the district council’s planning pages. If you would like to respond formally to the council about any planning application, comments should be addressed to the district council and not to me.  Comments may be made

• online using the council’s public access web page (the link above);
• by email to plservices@eastcambs.gov.uk;
• or by post to the Planning Department, The Grange, Nutholt Lane, Ely, CB7 4EE.

Works on the A142 BP roundabout at Ely are currently ahead of schedule – and the Council will be bringing forward the carriageway surfacing which will now start on Monday 19 October for five nights.

For those five nights, all arms of the roundabout will be closed with access granted only to the frontages of the A10/A142 and the services area. Depending on where the works are taking place vehicles may be asked to travel the appropriate diversion route to access properties within the works area.

Diversion route west

Diversion route north

A useful summary of the latest state of Covid national restrictions in England https://www.gov.uk/government/news/coronavirus-covid-19-what-has-changed-22-september

October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

According to his memoir, Olaudah Equiano was born in around 1745 in the Eboe region of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is today southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold as a slave to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more but bought his freedom in 1766, and for a while worked at sea including as part of an expedition to the Arctic to try to find a north-east passage to India.

On moving to London, he became active in the campaign against the slave trade, and was encouraged and financially supported by benefactors to write his life story.

In April 1792, Equiano married Susannah Cullen, a local woman, in St Andrew’s Church in Soham. The register containing the record of the marriage is held in the Cambridgeshire Archives. The couple settled locally and had two daughters who were baptised at the church in Soham. Equiano died in Westminster in 1797.

More about Olaudah Equiano at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano

October is Black History Month, so every day for the next 31 days I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Septimius Severus has been described as the first black Roman Emperor. He was indeed Emperor of Rome, ruling from 193 to 211. Whether he could be described as ‘black’ is a matter of some debate – he was born in Leptis Magna in what is now Libya (one of my bucket list travel destinations!).

Septimius Severus travelled to Britain in 208, strengthening Hadrian’s Wall and reoccupying the Antonine Wall. In 209 he invaded Caledonia (modern Scotland) with an army of 50,000 men but fell fatally ill of an infectious disease in late 210 and died the following year in York.

(The painting above known as the Severan Tondo shows Septimius Severus with his wife and their two sons Caracalla and Geta. The erased face is said to be Geta, who was murdered by his brother Caracalla less than a year after their father’s death. Caracalla then announced a damnatio memoriae against his dead brother, which meant what it sounds like – a scrubbing out of all references to someone, with faces removed from portraits, names obliterated from monuments and official records.)

More about Septimius Severus at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimius_Severus

It’s less than six months to the census – the population survey which takes place in the UK every ten years (years ending in an 1).

It takes a lot of work by a lot of people, as I remember from when I was a census enumerator in Essex for the 1991 census, going door to door to deliver the census forms and going back several times to remind those who had not completed them.

The Office of National Statistics has been considering how to run this exercise during a pandemic, and preparing for the particular challenges of early 2021.

The findings of the census play an important part in shaping all sorts of decisions, so it’s really vital to ensure it is as accurate as possible.