Bangor and the surrounding parts of North Wales are noticeably less diverse than South Wales. There is less industry here and the region hasn't been as reshaped by overseas immigration as, say, Cardiff or Swansea. The major cultural change here has come from English migration, particularly in the last 50 years or so. I'm one of those migrants now, so my relationship to Bangor is understandably different to someone born here in North Wales. Coming from London, the lack of diversity here in Bangor is one of the big differences to life in a global megacity. But this is clearly changing. Bangor University and Ysbyty Gwynedd attract students and workers from all over the world, and many have brought their families with them or started families here. It's noticeable in some parts of the city, when walking past school gates at 3pm for example, just how diverse a population there is developing here.
That said, Black history has been interlinked with the history of North Wales since the 17th century. The Pennant family, originally of Flintshire, built their wealth by purchasing land in Jamaica and operating several sugar plantations. These were, of course, run using slave labour, and the Pennant family owned hundreds of enslaved people taken from West Africa during the Transatlantic slave trade. In the late 18th century, Richard Pennant used this wealth to build Penrhyn castle and to develop the slate industry at Penrhyn quarry. His descendants used the family's money, including over £1 million in today's money they received as compensation for the freedom of their enslaved workforce when slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, to build infrastructure in and around Bangor. Much of the city still bears signs of the Pennant family's investment into Bangor.
One literal sign bearing the family's name is in Pennants Crescent, just off Caernarfon Road. The street itself is a small cul de sac of 1920s-era housing, built long after the Pennant family's influence on Bangor had waned. When I saw the street sign, I thought of Pennants, Jamaica, a town that had grown up around one of the Pennant family's plantations, and one inextricably linked to this part of North Wales.
Opposite Pennants Crescent is Glanadda Cemetery, the oldest in Bangor. Glanadda holds the grave of a Black sailor, John Thomas from Lagos, Nigeria. He lived in Liverpool, where he was married to a white British woman, Amelia Thomas (née Andrews). He was Chief Fireman onboard the SS Apapa in 1917, when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Anglesey. Thomas had also been onboard the SS Falaba in 1915 when it was torpedoed, an incident that almost led to the early entry of the United States into the First World War. Thomas survived this sinking and had to identify the bodies of his fellow sailors, several of them also from West Africa. Two years later, Thomas died on the Apapa and was buried here in Bangor, next to his crewmate from Sierra Leone, Isaac Peppel.
I looked for John Thomas's grave one morning last autumn. Glanadda Cemetery is not large, but it took me more than an hour to find this specific gravestone. Thomas is obviously quite a common Welsh name, and I found several graves of other Thomases who had died while serving in the First and Second World Wars. When I eventually found the grave of John Thomas, it was in a place I'd walked past several times already that morning. Not obscured or hidden at all, but easily overlooked.
I thought about Thomas's wife, Amelia, who came here from Liverpool for his burial. I don't know why Bangor was chosen as his final resting place. I wondered what connected him to this town. He was just 21 when he died, so could not have lived in Liverpool for long either, although he had clearly put down roots there while not at sea. What about his family in Lagos, nearly 4000km from this cemetery in Bangor? Or the family of Isaac Peppel, in Sierra Leone? I'd guess that it's not unusual for sailors to die and be buried half the world away from their families, particularly during wartime. It must be very painful though.
John Thomas had little connection to Bangor during his life, but his body has laid here now for over a hundred years. His story has become part of Bangor's history, and that of Wales. This part of the UK may still be very white but, if you look carefully, there is evidence that it hasn't been exclusively so for a long time.
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