Just outside Bristol, in the countryside of South Gloucestershire lies the small village of Codrington. It shares its name with the capital of a little known island in the Caribbean - Barbuda. Inside Out West presenter Josie d'Arby investigates the connection between the two communities in a special documentary on Sunday 18th March at 2225 on BBC1 (West), but you can watch a special edition of the programme using the link below. The story begins in the days of slave trade, when a man called Christopher Codrington set off from South Gloucestershire to seek his fortune as a sugar planter. The plantations made the Codrington family very rich and paid for the construction of the mansion Dodington House. Barbuda's main town also became known as Codrington but the island has a grim secret which is only just coming to light. As the slave trade abolition movement gathered momentum, it appears the Codringtons used Barbuda as a kind of breeding station for slaves. There's good evidence the family used Barbuda to maintain a good supply of labour for the plantations on neighbouring Antigua.  | | Codrington's plantation was on Barbuda |
It's a revelation that horrifies presenter Josie. "The very idea of a slave nursery I find totally immoral. I can't imagine what kind of people could even think of it, let alone sanction it in order to increase profits. "More than that, it's made me really angry that the sanctity of human life could be so wantonly abused." And there are other connections between South Gloucestershire and Barbuda. On Josie's final day on the island she discovers that many people in the community of Codrington have the surname Bezer - a name with its origins very much in Gloucestershire. It's another throwback to the days of the slave trade when enslaved Africans would be given the surname of their "owners".
The special edition of Inside Out West is on BBC One (West) on Sunday 18th March at 2225. The programme is part of a major season of radio and television programmes and online content to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade act. | 
