About
History
Our Timeline
1710 - 1833
USPG’s predecessor organisation The Society of the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) received a bequest from Sir Christopher Codrington III in 1710 for two sugar plantation estates in Barbados. The estates totalled 700 acres and included a population of approximately 400 enslaved African men, women, and children. Until emancipation in 1833, SPG used local managers to run the Codrington estates as a plantation business to fund and expand its missionary activities across the globe, seeing generations of enslaved persons endure brutal and degrading treatment.
1833 - 1850
Following emancipation in 1833, SPG was compensated approx. £8823 for the emancipation of 410 enslaved people from the Codrington Estates. It marked emancipation by launching a major appeal for an Instruction Fund raising over £170,000 to provide churches, clergy catechists, schools and teachers in the region between 1835 and 1850.
1840
The passing of the Masters and Slavers Act in Barbados provided a range of welfare provisions for ex-slaves.
1863
The Rio Pongas mission saw black missionaries trained at Codrington College sent to aid the Christianising of West Africa until 1873.
1955
The Community of the Resurrection assumes the running of Codrington College from SPG.
1965
The SPG combines with the United Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), a former abolitionist organisation established by David Livingstone.
1980
The Tenantries Freehold Act is passed in Barbados. Tenants living on the island’s numerous plantation tenantries are given the right to purchase their land from the government at a rate of 10 cents per square foot. Amended over subsequent decades. This is followed by the 1983 Agricultural Freehold Act, which allowed tenants of agricultural lands, who were renting spots five years prior, to gain the right to purchase their lots but at a negotiated price.
1983
Following an act of Parliament, the trusteeship of The Codrington Estate (including Codrington College) was passed formally from the SPG to the newly established Codrington Trust, an organisation created in Barbados to inherit and manage the Codrington estates, which today includes a large area of tenantry land and Codrington College, a theological training institution.
2020
An AHRC research project collaboration between USPG, the University of Leeds and Early Modern Letters Online digitises and analyses an early portion of the SPG archives, completed in 2020. This stimulates discussion and interest in engaging closer with USPG’s historical legacy.
The Codrington Trust commissions Dr Janice Cumberbatch at the University of the West Indies to produce a social impact report providing a detailed breakdown of its five distinct tenant communities during a review of its real estate assets, completed in 2020. This report underpins the subsequent project proposal submitted to USPG.
2023
The Codrington Trust commissions Dr Janice Cumberbatch at the University of the West Indies to produce a social impact report providing a detailed breakdown of its five distinct tenant communities during a review of its real estate assets, completed in 2020. This report underpins the subsequent project proposal submitted to USPG.
2024
The Renewal & Reconciliation: The Codrington project formally launches via a series of events at Codrington College and the first meeting of its steering group, after which the project’s core workstreams begin.
