| Notes | Turners Hall, in the parish of St Andrew, Barbados, was a sugar plantation worked by enslaved labour. There are a considerable number of records in the Fitzherbert archive (D239) about the estate and its management, including lists of enslaved people on the plantation, inventories, ledgers, journals, accounts, financial papers, and correspondence. The Fitzherbert archive also includes journals written by Sir Henry Fitzherbert from Barbados to his wife in England in 1825.
Turners Hall was bequeathed in 1746 by Elizabeth Alleyne, the widow of Colonel Abel Alleyne, to her nephew Thomas Alleyne, with contingent remainder to her neice, Mary Fitzherbert (c1721-1753), eldest daughter of Littleton Poyntz Meynell of Bradley, Derbyshire, and wife of William FitzHerbert (1712-1772) of Tissington Hall, Derbyshire. When the estate came into the ownership of the Fitzherberts, members of the Alleyne family remained involved with the estate and acted as attorneys there. On the death of William FitzHerbert in 1772, it passed to his son William (1748-1791), who in 1784 became Sir William Fitzherbert, 1st baronet. He married Sarah Perrin, the daughter of William Perrin, through whom the Fitzherberts later acquired estates in Jamaica. Turners Hall was inherited by Sir Anthony Perrin Fitzherbert (1779-1798), 2nd baronet, in 1791 and on his death it passed to his younger brother, Sir Henry Fitzherbert (1783-1858), 3rd baronet. The estate remained in the family until at least the 1950s.
An article by Justin Roberts: 'Uncertain business: a case study of Barbadian plantation management, 1770-1793' (2011) provides an analysis of its economic performance for those years.
The following list gives the number of enslaved people on the estate (with the documentary source in brackets):
1759 - 138 (45 men, 48 women, 27 boys, 18 girls) (D239/M/E/20751)
1771 - 164 (D239/M/E/20752)
1780 - 167 (D239/M/E/20753)
1781 - 164 (D239/M/E/20755)
1784 - 197 (D239/M/E/20762)
1804 - 176 (Barbados Department of Archives levy book RB9/3/7)
1817 - 137 (The National Archives slave register T71/522)
1821 - 138 (D239/M/E/20765)
1823 - 138 (The National Archives slave register T71/530)
1826 - 194 (The National Archives slave register T71/537)
1829 - 174 (The National Archives slave register T71/543)
1832 - 147 (The National Archives slave register T71/550) |