Personal Research/ Historical Context


Where the project becomes personal to me is considering why i'm in this place right now, it is due to the arrivals of my great-grandparents and grandparents in this country between the 1950's and 1960s coming from Jamaica and Grenada.

My Mother's Side


Speaking to my mother she recalls hearing that her mum arrived in the U.K on a boat called the Windrush. She told me of how her mum met her father aboard the boat en-route to the country, having been from different parts of the same island (Jamaica) the two had never met until their paths had crossed as they both embarked on a new chapter in their lives. He went on to pursue my grandmother as my mother described and they would end up raising a family setting in South-West London.

Conducting my own research i found that a boat
called the 'SS Empire Windrush' was responsible for shipping a great deal of caribbean workers in the 1950's on an 8,000 mile journey to England. It's first journey docked at Tilbury, Essex in June 1948 carrying passengers from a number of caribbean countries.




The ship docked in Kingston, Jamaica and collected up a boatload of mostly young men on its first voyages, many of them didn't have places to stay so the government accommodated them in air-rade shelters in Clapham Common. But as soon as work was found they were to move away, soon young caribbean's began settling in areas of the UK with high demand for employment - London, Manchester and the midlands. Work was simple enough to find as Britain was in need of labour after suffering half a million casualties in the 2nd world war.




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