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My daughter was telling me about John Bolton, a slave trader and once owner of Storrs Hall on Windermere. A building I passed ever day to and from work. Born in Ulverston he brought slaves back on his ships and kept them chained in the cellar of Storrs Hall until they were sold.
That for all these years I never realised that the house built for an Admiral, now a hotel, had such a dark past. That I went through school, did history to A level and never once learned about the dark lessons of history, almost on my doorstop, is shameful.
It is rumoured he threw the bodies of the dead slaves in Lake Windermere apart from one 13 year old slave who was given a grave. While we were taught about Wordsworth’s host of golden daffodils, the truth is he and Bolton along with Sir Walter Scott were lifelong friends.
You can dispute the rights and wrongs of having BLM protests in the midst of a pandemic, or whether statues should stay or not until you are blue in the face. But until we own up to our pasts and acknowledge why Black Lives Matter, we will never learn from our past.
