Plantation Wharf: MP calls for name change over slavery link

Plantation Wharf is a housing complex in Battersea

A housing complex in south London should be renamed due to its links to the slave trade, an MP has said.

Plantation Wharf, which sits between the Thames and Clapham Junction, features locations labelled with goods that fuelled the slave trade.

Battersea MP Marsha de Cordova said names like Cotton Row were "offensive".

The development's owners are carrying out a review of the labels, but the chair of the board of the directors rejected the MP's complaint.

Plantation Wharf, which was first developed in the 1980s, is subdivided into rows labelled with food and fabrics, including calico, molasses and cinnamon.

Ms de Cordova said she wrote to Wandsworth Council a year ago asking for them to consider renaming the development, but did not receive a response.

"These names are offensive," she said. "They're quite sickening and in many respects almost glorify what was an abhorrent enslavement of Africans."

Battersea MP Marsha de Cordova said the names used at the complex were "offensive"

However, Dr Vanessa Brady, the chair of the development's board of directors, rejected Ms de Cordova's complaint, which she said was an attempt to "commercialise negativity".

She said: "I don't agree with local MP Marsha de Cordova's sweeping statement on the site's history when she is unaware of both the positive or negative impact of this site.

"To do so simply breeds hate which I believe is what we are all working to eradicate. I want facts not opinion.

"Researchers show that the wharf generated jobs which freed many from slavery."

Dr Brady added she had commissioned research into the names "associated with international trade and with business from far away countries", and why they had been chosen.

This research will then be presented to the development's stakeholders for a vote on whether to change the names, she explained.

The development is subdivided into rows labelled with goods which fuelled the slave trade

Both the mayor of London and Wandsworth Council said they did not have the power to intervene in a private development.

A mayoral spokesman said the names of privately-owned complexes "are not decisions for the mayor", although "the names used in this private development carry heavy and problematic connotations and it is right that the owners will be consulting with leaseholders and stakeholders to review them".

A spokesman for Wandsworth Council said: "This is a private development in which the buildings were named by the developer 26 years ago in 1995.

"We understand that its current management team has been approached on this issue and has expressed a willingness to look again at the names of these buildings."