Radio Bimshire Presents

House on James Street: Episode four - "Missionaries, Mobs and the Conventicle Act" 01.07.2026 14min

House on James Street, episode four, follows the arrival of Moravian and Methodist missionaries into an island society built on sugar, slavery and Anglican respectability – and the backlash that followed.In “Missionaries, Mobs, and the Conventicle Act”, we trace how evangelical preaching, British debates over slavery, and fears of rebellion turn Methodist missions into targets for pro-slavery planters in Barbados. As mobs destroy the island’s Methodist chapel and drive out its minister, a free coloured woman, Ann Gill, opens her house on James Street to a persecuted congregation, defying hostile magistrates, an indifferent governor and an obscure 17th‑century English law, the Conventicle Act. This episode explores how a woman marked in the records as “FC” for "free coloured" becomes the unlikely defender of religious freedom and Methodist witness in Bridgetown, and how her stand sends ripples all the way to the British Parliament.Produced and Presented by Julius GittensSeries theme music: Ralph Vaughan Williams - "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" - US Army Strings (public domain)

Sounds of Freedom III - episode 5 - "Wealth Built on Bondage" (part two) 28.06.2026 7min

We continue the story of how one British family accumulated and protected wealth built on sugar, slavery and the suffering of enslaved Africans in Barbados in this second part of “Wealth Built on Bondage”. British investigative journalist and author Dr Paul Lashmar joins host Shayla Murrell to explore the modern legacy of Drax Hall Plantation in St George, and how the Drax family’s fortunes remained tied to an estate stained by bondage long after emancipation. Drawing on his book “Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich and Stayed Rich from Sugar and Slavery”, Dr Lashmar reflects on apology, responsibility and reparations, and why attempts to speak with current owner Richard Drax about Barbados’s calls for atonement and memorialisation have gone unanswered. Against the backdrop of a 2026 United Nations resolution naming the Transatlantic Slave Trade the gravest crime against humanity, this episode considers what meaningful justice, dialogue and remembrance might look like for Barbados and the wider African diaspora.

House on James Street: Episode three - Free Coloured Women, Property and Power 24.06.2026 20min

Before she was a National Hero, Sarah Ann Gill was a woman of property in Bridgetown, navigating the brutal contradictions of a slave society. In this episode, we explore the precarious lives of free coloured women in early 19th-century Barbados.The late historian Professor Pedro Welch unpacked how these women — tavern owners, property holders, and political actors — used inheritance, commerce, and strategic influence to carve out autonomy in a rigid slave society. From the political courage of her husband during their short-lived marriage to the extraordinary influence wielded by a woman inside the Governor’s residence, we examine the complex strategies that laid the foundation for Sarah Ann Gill’s future defiance.Join us as we set the stage for the religious conflict to come—and the moment one house on James Street would change history.Produced and presented by Julius Gittens.Original music composed by Aaron Paul from #Uppbeat:https://uppbeat.io/t/aaron-paul-low/all-that-glitters

Sounds of Freedom III - episode 4 - "Wealth Built on Bondage" (part one) 24.06.2026 10min

Wealth Built on Bondage (Part One) traces how the Drax family built and preserved generational wealth from sugar, slavery and land ownership in Barbados and Dorset, and asks what justice and reparations should look like today.When protests over racial injustice swept the world in 2020, Barbados was already wrestling with its own symbols of empire, including the statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson in Bridgetown. As that monument finally came down, another story of power and privilege was coming into focus: the quiet, centuries-long fortunes of the Drax family, built on sugar, enslavement and the brutal regime of chattel slavery at Drax Hall plantation in St George. In this episode of Sounds of Freedom III , host Shayla Murrell features British investigative journalist and author Dr Paul Lashmar who explored how one of Britain’s wealthiest families “got rich and stayed rich” from slavery, from 17th‑century Barbados to a 16,000‑acre estate in Dorset sometimes called “the Great Wall of Dorset”. Drawing on his book Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich and Stayed Rich from Sugar and Slavery, Lashmar unpacks documents that reveal the modern inheritance of Drax Hall by Conservative MP Richard Drax and the international debate over reparations now surrounding it. He explained more in a talk at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.Wealth Built on Bondage (Part One) asks hard questions about inherited wealth, historical accountability and what it means to confront a past that still shapes who owns land and power today.

Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 3 - “Monkey Noko” 21.06.2026 6min

Sounds of Freedom III: Esther Phillips and the legend of Monkey Noko digs into the haunting legacy of Drax Hall Plantation and the unfinished business of emancipation in Barbados. Against the backdrop of one of the hemisphere’s oldest sugar estates, Phillips reflects on growing up in the shadow of Drax Hall without ever being told its brutal history of sugar and slavery. Through her poem “Monkey Noko”, she interrogates loyalty, survival, silence and complicity on the plantation, and asks what it cost to gain a white master’s favour in a world built on Black dispossession.

House on James Street: Episode two - Building a slave society 17.06.2026 15min

In Episode Two - "Building A Slave Society" - House on James Street explores the roots of the world that would one day define Sarah Ann Gill. Joining us is historian Professor Pedro Welch, who walks us through the 17th-century transformation of Barbados into a laboratory of plantation slavery. We trace how an overwhelmingly African population, brought from the Gold Coast, was systematically dehumanized by a "plantocracy"—and how they maintained their humanity within a brutal system that categorized them as property.From the specific names recorded in 1654 plantation lists to the complex bureaucratic labels used for the growing free coloured population—FM, FN, and FC—this episode uncovers the rigid social structures that dictated life in early Barbados. We begin to see how this history of violence, intimacy, and resistance created the very environment that Sarah Ann Gill would one day navigate and challenge.Produced and presented by Julius Gittens from a National Library Service lecture by late historian Professor Pedro Welch.

Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 2 - “Hard Love - Odifo's Story"” 17.06.2026 7min

This episode of Sounds of Freedom III traces the journey of a boy named Odifo and the enslaved mothers who loved – and lost – their children on Barbados’s sugar estates, through the words of poet and former Poet Laureate of Barbados, Esther Phillips. In this episode, Phillips reads her searing poem “Hard Love” and reflects on the emotional terror, brutality and impossible “adjustments” enslaved women were forced to make, knowing their babies could be sold away at any moment.Host Shayla Murrell guides listeners through the soundscape of Drax Hall plantation in St George – once owned by James and Henry Drax – evoking the heat, cane dust and the small, weary bodies of children who laboured there, where nearly 30,000 enslaved Africans perished over two centuries. This episode offers a powerful meditation on emancipation, memory and the long shadow of wealth built on the suffering of enslaved families in Barbados.

New episodes: House on James Street 15.06.2026 1min

Before Sarah Ann Gill became a National Hero, she was a free woman in Bridgetown — navigating a society built on the brutal logic of slavery. In this episode, we step into her world to explore the precarious, complex lives of free coloured women in early 19th-century Barbados.The late historian Professor Pedro Welch unpacked the strategies these women — tavern owners, property holders, and political actors—used to carve out autonomy in a discriminatory society. From the political courage of Alexander Gill’s 1811 petition to the extraordinary, behind-the-scenes influence of Betty Goodwin in the Governor’s residence, we examine how wealth, negotiation, and survival paved the way for Sarah Ann Gill’s future defiance.House on James Street - a radio documentary series only on Radio Bimshire - explores the contradictions of love, power, and property — and set the stage for the moment one house on James Street would change history.Produced and presented by Julius Gittens

Sounds of Freedom III - Esther Phillips - 1 - “Choice Young Negro” 15.06.2026 6min

Sounds of Freedom is a journey through the soundscape of emancipation, memory, and hope. In episode one from a new season, host Shayla Murrell sits with Barbadian poet, teacher, and editor Esther Phillips, Barbados’ first Poet Laureate, to explore the making and meaning of her poem “Choice Young Negro”.Drawing on a chilling 1979 instruction manual written by plantation owner Henry Drax for the running of Drax Hall Estate, the conversation unpacks how enslaved Africans were reduced to “units” of labour and profit — and how poetry can turn that language back on itself. Esther’s poem responds to Drax’s demand for “choice young Negroes” by restoring the enslaved as sons, daughters, and freedom fighters from the Coromantee people, whose strength and resistance haunted the sugar empire that tried to break them. Through archive, verse, and voice, this episode situates Drax Hall within the wider history of Caribbean slavery, where historians estimate that close to 30,000 enslaved Africans died on Drax plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. Hear how those lives still echo in Barbados today — not as a mere footnote to empire, but as a living call to remember, reckon, and imagine freedom anew.

This Barbadian Life - 09 - "The Birth Women" 15.06.2026 10min

In this special International Midwifery Day edition of This Barbadian Life, we honour the Barbadian “birth women” – the lay midwives who walked cane tracks and village roads at all hours to catch babies long before there were labour wards and diplomas. Registered midwife Michelle Marshall guides us from the apprenticeship days of granny and auntie, through the 1937 riots and the Moyne Commission, into today’s accredited midwifery programmes at the Barbados Community College. Along the way, she recalls home births by kerosene lamp, folk practices like sealing house cracks against “lining cold”, and the quiet, transcultural wisdom passed from one generation of Caribbean women to the next.This episode sits at the crossroads of African-Caribbean tradition and a formal health system that slowly expanded in the 20th century. It celebrates the midwives – women and men – who continue to hold families’ hopes in their hands, blending ancestral knowledge with modern medicine in delivery rooms across Barbados.This Barbadian Life – real voices, true stories, only in Barbados - is presented by Shayla Murrell for Radio Bimshire - the voice of the National Library Service of Barbados

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part nine (final): "Spouge Forevermore" 30.05.2026 11min

Legacy only lives if it is nurtured. In the final episode, we visit the Jackie Opel Residency Lab, where a new generation of musicians, visual artists and choreographers reimagine his work for today’s Barbados, proving that spouge is not a relic but a living, evolving movement.Written, produced and narrated by Shayla MurrellProduced with John Downes, Amour Chandler, Lamar Nicholls and Adrian ArcherMixed and edited by Julius Gittens

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part eight: "A Musical Revolution" 23.05.2026 12min

What began as a local rhythm became a chapter in Caribbean music history. This episode looks at how Jamaicans like Dean Fraser and regional scholars place Jackie Opel alongside reggae’s greats, and how spouge helped reshape ideas of what Barbadian music could be.Narrated by Shayla Murrell

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part seven: "The Rhythm Goes On" 16.05.2026 15min

Jackie Opel’s voice fell silent, but spouge did not. From Wendy Alleyne to the late Richard Stoute and a generation of performers, part seven follows the artists who carried his legacy forward, keeping Barbadian voices on stage and spouge alive in dance halls and on radio.Narrated by Shayla Murrell

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part six: "The Loss of a Legend" 09.05.2026 10min

On March 9 1970, at just 32, Jackie Opel’s story ended abruptly on Bay Street. Friends and collaborators remember the night of the accident, the outpouring of grief, and what it meant for a young nation to lose one of its brightest artistic lights just as his career was reaching new heights.Narrated by Shayla Murrell

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge: part five: "Spouge Beyond Borders" 02.05.2026 15min

Spouge was not only culture, it was commerce. This episode explores how bands like Blue Rhythm Combo, De Opels, The Escorts, The Troubadours, Draytons Two and Wendy Alleyne and the Dynamics took a Barbadian beat into hotels, dance halls, regional tours and record sales, turning rhythm into livelihoods.

PREMIERE: House on James Street: Episode one - Intrepid Fighter for Religious Freedom 28.04.2026 20min

Before Barbados had universal adult suffrage, before slavery was abolished in the British Empire, and before religious freedom was protected by law, a free coloured woman in Bridgetown did something dangerously simple: she opened her front door.In Episode One – “An Intrepid Fighter for Religious Freedom” – House on James Street introduces the life and times of the Right Excellent Sarah Ann Gill. We meet Ann Gill as a free coloured woman of property in early 19th‑century Bridgetown, whose home on James Street becomes a sanctuary for persecuted Methodists after white mobs destroy the island’s Methodist chapel and drive out the minister.Drawing on the research of the late historian Professor Pedro Welch, this opening episode peels back the myths to reveal a more complex figure: a devoted Methodist and National Hero who was also part of a free coloured world shaped by slavery, race and property. We set the scene for the series by tracing how Gill’s year under siege – facing threats, gunfire, and legal harassment under the old Conventicle Act – would eventually echo all the way to the Colonial Office in London and the floor of the British Parliament.This episode lays the groundwork for the journey ahead: from the making of a slave society to the rise of a free coloured community, and from a front room on James Street to the heart of imperial power.

NATIONAL HEROES DAY PREMIERE: House on James Street: The Life and Times of Sarah Ann Gill 27.04.2026 2min

Before slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Before religious freedom was protected by law. A free coloured woman in Bridgetown did something dangerously simple: she opened her front door.House on James Street is a new Radio Bimshire original series that follows the life and times of the Right Excellent Sarah Ann Gill – from the making of a slave society and the rise of a free coloured community, to the mobs that tore down a Methodist chapel and the front room that became a sanctuary for persecuted worshippers.Drawing on the work of the late historian Professor Pedro Welch, the series peels back the myths to reveal a more complex figure: a woman of faith and property, a defender of religious freedom, and, like many of her class and time, an enslaver. It is a story of courage and compromise, resistance and complicity, stretching from James Street in Bridgetown to debates in the British Parliament.Follow this show and tap the bell to be notified when House on James Street drops on Radio Bimshire Presents. Subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode - and listen live online at http://bit.ly/RadioBimshire.

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part four: "Decade of a superstar" 25.04.2026 9min

As independence swept the Caribbean in the 1960s, Jackie Opel became a symbol of a region finding its voice. Scholars and cultural critics set spouge in the context of nationalism, decolonisation and a maturing Barbadian recording industry that was finally ready for its own sound.Narrated by Shayla Murrell

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part three: "When Jackie Met Bob" 18.04.2026 12min

His voice cut through bands, rocked Jamaican stages and stunned schoolboys who thought only Kingston stars could command a crowd. In part three, historians and eyewitnesses recall Jackie Opel’s time in Jamaica, his brushes with ska and rocksteady royalty, and how a Bajan singer earned respect in reggae’s heartland.

The Opel Effect: The Soul of Spouge - part two: "The Birth of a Beat" 11.04.2026 16min

Jackie Opel was not just a star, he was a mentor who saw greatness in City youths long before the country did. This episode traces how De Opels, Richard Stoute and other young talents helped forge a new Barbadian sound that would become known as spouge.