Did Benedict Cumberbatch’s Family own Slaves?

Benedict Cumberbatch’s ancestors were slave owners, boasting ‘250  slaves’ on their sugar plantation in Barbados in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s 7th-great-grandfather, Abraham Cumberbatch of Saint Andrew, Barbados purchased properties on the island of Barbados in the West Indies in 1728.

The plantations were passed down through the generations until 1816, when Abraham’s grandson, Abraham Parry, faced a slave rebellion.

The uprising lasted two months and resulted in the deaths of Bussa and an estimated 1,000 slaves; another 214 slaves were executed and 123 were shipped off the island.

Abraham Parry returned to Britain in 1820 to live at Fairwater House, a stately home in Devon that is now the site of Taunton School, and the slave trade in Barbados was abolished 18 years later.

His ancestors were given £6,000 to compensate for the loss of their ‘human property’ when the slave trade was abolished in the 1830s. In today’s money, the compensation would be worth more than £3.6 million.

The Cumberbatch family is aware of how the wider world perceives their dark past at Cleland Plantation in Saint Andrew, Barbados.

His mother, the actress Wanda Ventham, had advised him not to use his real surname professionally for fear of becoming a target for reparation claims by slave descendants.

But Cumberbatch has always been open about his background and, if anything, appears to have sought out roles that leave no room for concealment.