Barbados Plantation Chattel Property

A House that Could Walk. The Barbados Chattel house was born in the years after emancipation, when liberty came without land. Plantation owners expected freed individuals to remain in the very same place, working the exact same fields, in the exact same reliance. However Barbados had other ideas-- therefore did the people who constructed their lives on its fields of sugar walking cane and coral plains.
Picture , a society of people who owned their home, but not the soil below it. The chattel house fixed a contradiction that the colonial system never planned to repair. Built on loose coral stones instead of structures, it could be lifted, moved, swung around, installed on a cart, rolled by neighbours, and replanted elsewhere-- typically over night.
It was architecture as resistance.
Ingenuity disguised as simplicity.
A home that declined to be held hostage.
The elder leaned forward, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret.
"You understand what a movable home does to an individuals? It teach them that belonging is not something to await-- is something you bring."

A RoguesCulture Series based on the Book Rogues in Paradise.

Barbados architecture