Blog | UK-SHHT

Poster with QR code for free history talk about the restoration of Toby's Cottage, St Helena

Toby's Cottage - The Story of an Unexpected Restoration

Toby's Cottage is one of the few remaining traces of St Helena's long history of reliance on enslaved labour. The original cottage was a basic two-roomed dwelling inhabited by enslaved domestic workers at The Briars, where Napoléon spent his first months in exile on St Helena. At the time of Napoléon's arrival, it was inhabited by Toby, a skilled gardener, aged about 60, who was held in slavery by the Balcombe family. Napoléon struck up an unlikely friendship with Toby...

Sep 142 min read

Detail of a coloured hand-drawn map showing Rupert's Bay on the left and the narrow Rupert's Valley stretching out to the right, with roads, plots, and buildings marked in. In the bottom right-hand corner there is an unbuilt-on area labelled as African Grave Yard A.

International Research into the Origins of the Liberated Africans

Groundbreaking international research into the regional origins of the Liberated Africans of St Helena.

Jul 172 min read

A coloured drawing of a corpulent Napoleon, standing and facing left. He wears a dark-coloured tailcoat with red collar and cuffs adorned with two medals on the left breast, and beige knee breeches, white stockings and black buckled pumps on his feet. A long row of coat and cummerbund buttons outlines the generous curve of his tummy. His brown hair is somewhat unruly, cut just above the collar. The image does not look like standard portraits of Napoleon, but that may be a reflection of the artist's poor portraiture; the drawing has an unsophisticated feel to it.

205 Years

Two original drawings from the collections of Royal Museums Greenwich to mark the 205th anniversary of Napoleon's death on St Helena on 5 May 1821.

May 52 min read