HIDDEN HISTORIES KAVITA PURI explores lesser-known stories from our past Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 whose history series include Three Pounds in My Pocket. She is also the author of Partition Voices: Untold British Stories (Bloomsbury, 2019)
OFF CLAPHAM COMMON NORTH SIDE, NEAR the Old Town, stands the Anglican Holy Trinity Church. It’s an imposing edifice, completed in 1776 near the site of a medieval church – in fact, an act of parliament was required to permit its construction. But its historical importance isn’t due to architecture or its older heritage.
In the 18th century, Clapham was just a village on the ancient road from London Bridge to Kingston; maps from the period show how green it was. Around the time the church was built, wealthy families were moving to the area – many to houses around the common – to escape unhealthy city life. This village was leafier than London and less crowded – and of course the air was better, too.
Worshipping at this new church from the 1790s to the 1830s were a group of evangelical Anglicans led by the rector, John Venn. In his 2010 book The Clapham Sect, Stephen Tomkins describes “a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce its centre of gravity, powerfully bound together by shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage”.
Wilberforce was a well-known abolitionist and MP. Others in the group included Henry Thornton, also an MP, and Zachary Macauley, a Scottish statistician and one of the founders of London University. Many of them were Oxbridge-educated and held positions of power and influence within the establishment. Though predominantly men, the group also included women such as playwright and religious writer Hannah More.
This evangelical group is best known for its part in the campaign for the abolition of slavery in the British empire, and in the founding of the first British colony in Africa. Sierra Leone was established with the purpose, as one group member put it, of achieving “the abolition of the slave trade, the civilisation of Africa, and the introduction of the gospel there”. At the time, members of the group later dubbed the Clapham Sect were ridiculed as “the Saints”. They were subjected to significant social stigma as a result of their involvement in the antislavery cause, not least because there were those who saw the abolitionists as radical and dangerous, as well as threatening their interests.
What is less kn
