18 The Circus Apartment

People often talk about this site’s beauty, architecture and wealth, but hardly ever about where that wealth came from. The Circus was completed in 1768, when Britain’s sugar economy was at its height. Profits from thousands of Caribbean plantations flowed into Britain, helping make Bath a wealthy spa city. Some residents owned enslaved people and plantations. James Plunkett lived at No. 4, and his family owned enslaved people in Jamaica. Lawrence Dundas lived at No. 5, and his family held plantations in Grenada and Dominica. At No. 9 lived John Newton, who owned the Newton plantation in Barbados, where Britain’s first slave code was imposed. Under that law, “Black” and “slave” were treated as the same word. White indentured servants had recorded names and legal rights, while Black enslaved people were treated as property that could be punished or killed without legal consequence. It wasn’t considered murder, but destruction of property. Barbados’s slave code was copied by other colonies, including Virginia in 1705, when tobacco planters left indentured labour behind and turned fully to slavery. People starved on plantations. Women killed their own infants to prevent them being born into slavery, and enslaved Africans could have a life expectancy of around twenty years. Barbados is fertile and food grows easily, yet enslaved workers were underfed because almost all the land was given over to sugar. The Newton family bought land to grow sugar and used four generations of enslaved African labour. That’s how John Newton could afford a luxury home here. Other residents made their money through imperial expansion in India instead of Caribbean sugar. Robert Clive, for example, lived at No. 11 and played a central role in Britain’s takeover of Bengal. It’s disturbing that these houses are still desirable homes and that most comments celebrate their beauty while ignoring the human cost. This place stands for lives taken, people worked to death, and generations denied their names, rights and humanity. People should know what paid for the elegance here, too. Source: information from “Empire with David Olusoga” (UK, 2025) and historical records of Caribbean slavery and Bath’s 18th-century wealth.