University of Greenwich gets donation by Duke of Buccleuch to eighteenth century celebrity, freed by an ancestor

The University of Greenwich, and Ignatius Sancho Memorial Committee, are proud to announce that the Duke of Buccleuch has given £5,000 towards a memorial in Greenwich Park to an eighteenth century black celebrity, enslaved as a child but freed by an ancestor, the then Duke of Montagu.298834

Ignatius Sancho ( c 1729-1780 ) was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic. He was transported as a two year old from what is now Colombia to the service of three sisters of the then Earl of Dartmouth in Greenwich, southeast London. Given books to read by the Duke of Montagu, who lived in a house overlooking Greenwich Park, he was freed and employed by two Dukes as butler and valet. Later, when through illness he could no longer work for the Montagu family, they funded him to set up a grocery shop in Charles Street, Westminster.

Sancho became a celebrity – a composer of over 100 dances and minuets, a man of letters whose correspondence was first published two years after his death and reprinted as a Penguin Classic in 1998, a friend of actors and intellectuals like David Garrick, and the first black man to vote in a Westminster election, in 1774.

The Sancho Memorial Committee, chaired by Lord Boateng, is working closely with the University of Greenwich to raise funds for a ceramic relief on the wall of Greenwich Park, a surviving section of the former Montague House. This will be based on a portrait on Sancho by Thomas Gainsborough, now held in the National Gallery of Canada. The committee is fortunate in retaining Christy Symington, a well-known sculptor, and it hopes the relief may be unveiled in late June, to coincide with a community opera about Sancho in the park by the Tramshed Theatre company of Woolwich.

The Duke of Buccleuch, whose gift was made via the Buccleuch Charitable Foundation, adds:

“Sancho’s story of triumph over adversity, of ingenuity, creativity, humour and humanity would make him special in any age, but I am so happy that my eighteenth century ancestors were able to play a part in helping him along the way, and I can now support a fitting celebration of his extraordinary life in a beautiful memorial.”

Lord Boateng, Chair of the Sancho Memorial Committee and Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, comments:

“The relationship between the Dukes of Montagu, their family, and Ignatius Sancho and his was a triumph of humanity over the prejudice and bigotry of the time. This generous donation, by the Dukes’ descendant, the current Duke of Buccleuch, is a fitting reminder of that very special relationship, and the enduring power of the human spirit to do good.”