Monument To Thomas Clarkson, 10 Metres South West Of Church Of St Mary

Monument to Thomas Clarkson, 10 metres south west of the Church of St Mary, Playford

A commemorative obelisk erected in 1857 to honour Thomas Clarkson, one of the most important figures in the British campaign to abolish the slave trade and slavery. Designed by George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal, the monument is a plain but striking structure of Aberdeen granite standing about five metres high. It is composed of two pieces and stands on a square plinth with four steps.

A band of darker granite runs around the obelisk roughly halfway up its length, bearing inscriptions on all four sides. The north side reads 'DURING THIRTY YEARS / A RESIDENT OF THIS PARISH'; the east side 'THOMAS CLARKSON / THE FRIEND OF SLAVES'; the south side 'INTERRED IN THIS CHURCHYARD / NEAR THE CHANCEL DOOR'; and the west side 'DIED AT PLAYFORD HALL / SEPT 26TH 1846 AGED 85 YEARS'. Lower down on the east side appears 'ERECTED 1857 / BY A FEW SURVIVING FRIENDS'.

Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) devoted his life to ending slavery. While at Cambridge in 1785, he won a Latin prize essay on the question 'Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?' His research into the Atlantic slave trade moved him profoundly, and in 1787 he helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He persuaded William Wilberforce to champion the cause in Parliament and spent years travelling Britain gathering evidence and testimony. He organised the parliamentary select committee's investigation of the slave trade, including the infamous diagram of how enslaved people were packed below decks on the ship the Brookes. The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade received royal assent on 25 March 1807, largely through Clarkson's efforts.

After a period farming in Cumberland and living in Bury St Edmunds, Clarkson moved to Playford Hall in 1816, a gift from the 5th Earl of Bristol. There he lived for the remaining thirty years of his life with his wife Catherine Buck. The hall became a gathering place for abolitionists from Britain and America. In 1821, Marie-Louise, widow of Henri Christophe, the deposed King of northern Haiti, sought refuge at Playford with her two daughters. Clarkson continued his work, founding the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823 and helping secure the end of enforced apprenticeship of former slaves after the Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833. Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Playford in 1853, describing it as hallowed ground where Clarkson had conducted his most important labours. One of his final visitors was the American abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Clarkson died at Playford Hall on 26 September 1846, aged 85.

He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's with his only child, Thomas, and was later joined by Catherine and their grandson. Although Clarkson had been ordained in the Church of England, he held strong Quaker sympathies, and in deference to Quaker beliefs against elaborate memorials, Catherine Clarkson did not place a tombstone on his grave, despite criticism. The obelisk was erected in 1857 through a subscription arranged by George Biddell Airy, whose uncle Arthur Biddell had been a friend and neighbour of Clarkson and had received classical tutoring from him as a boy. The monument was designed to Airy's specifications. A memorial to Thomas and Catherine Clarkson was later placed inside the church, commissioned by Mary Clarkson, Clarkson's niece and daughter-in-law. In 1996, a tablet commemorating Clarkson was placed in Westminster Abbey near the Wilberforce tomb.