Garfield Weston Foundation awards £40,000 to the No. 1 Building Project
We are delighted to announce that the Garfield Weston Foundation has pledged £40,000 to the UK-St Helena Heritage Trust to support the No. 1 Building Project in St Helena.
Read the full press release about the award here.
Michael Binyon OBE, UKSHHT Chairman, welcomed the generous support of the Foundation and praised the vision and readiness of the Weston family to support projects in the UK Overseas Territories, observing that: "UKOTs are the custodians of hugely important parts of British history and yet they are excluded from support by many funders of UK heritage. The Weston family’s willingness to help preserve the built and cultural heritage of St Helena is greatly encouraging to all of us who understand and value the historic significance of our Overseas Territories."
The Garfield Weston Foundation funding will cover most of the modernisation costs for the No. 1 Building, including the installation of utilities, the mechanical and electrical fit-out and the construction of an accessible entrance. It supplements the £165,000 awarded to the St Helena National Trust for the project by the Commonwealth Heritage Forum in March 2026, which is funding both the restoration of the historic fabric of the No. 1 Building and a flagship heritage skills training programme for construction workers in St Helena. For more information about that very generous award, please see our earlier blog post.
We still have furnishing, display and equipment costs to raise to ensure that the restored building can open as a modern exhibition space and interpretation centre. Thank you so much to everyone who donated in response to our last newsletter. If you can help with our final funding needs, please do! It is very exciting to think that after so many years of planning by the Liberated African Advisory Committee and the St Helena National Trust this important project of learning and remembrance is nearing fruition.
Historical Background to the Award
The No. 1 Building is the only surviving structure from St Helena’s role as a reception centre for slaving ships captured by the Royal Navy between 1840 and 1867. In these years, the Royal Navy disembarked some 27,000 enslaved and trafficked Africans in St Helena. Tragically, more than 8,000 men, women and children died there – chiefly from disease and trauma – shortly after their liberation. Most were interred in two burial grounds in the valley. These burial grounds are one of the world’s most significant physical traces of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Middle Passage.
St Helena’s Liberated Africans were part of the enforced African diaspora that continued for decades after various slave-trading nations outlawed the trade. The Liberated Africans Database calculates that, between 1800 and 1920, over 700,000 Africans were rescued from slaving ships only to be transported onwards, mostly to the Americas and Caribbean, as indentured or bonded labourers. Many endured a lifetime of servitude, despite their ‘liberation’.
This was the fate of most of the surviving Liberated Africans on St Helena. They were shipped to British colonies in the Caribbean or to South Africa, where they were required to work for years as indentured labourers to pay back the costs of their passage and upkeep. Abuses of the system were many and it has often been called a new system of slavery.
The No. 1 Building project seeks to promote awareness of the tragic history of Trans-Atlantic enslavement and St Helena’s role in this global narrative. The restored building will serve as a fitting tribute to the thousands of trafficked Africans who died in St Helena. It will also recognise and honour the resilience of the many thousands who were sent on to labour in the Caribbean or South Africa and the few hundred who stayed and built new lives for themselves in St Helena. It will provide a means for people to understand the scale and gravity of the human suffering and international displacement that continued to occur in the decades after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was outlawed.
Read more about the No. 1 Building Project.
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