Dateline: March 18

Dateline visits the homes uncovering links to colonialism and slavery, and asks if the legacy of the British empire is crumbling?

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Dateline this week visits the idyllic homes uncovering links to colonialism and slavery, and asks if the legacy of the British empire is crumbling?

As British history and heritage institutions start to tell new stories uncovering their links to colonialism and slavery, there’s a growing debate in Britain over how it should present its past.

Two carved figures depicting kneeling black men are displayed at the back of a room in the upstairs of Dyrham Park, a 17th century mansion in the rolling hills of the Bath countryside in Britain. The figures, chained at the ankles and neck, are holding scallop shells above their head.

Alison Copper, a local volunteer at the house, explains that the stands would have been used to hold potpourri or confectionary.

“They would have been literally part of the furniture that that nobody would have thought anything about particularly, which shows how attitudes and things have changed,” she told Dateline.

These disturbing objects remind the tourists wandering through the property that English country estates like Dyrham Park were symbols of wealth power and influence from an era when the British Empire thrived through colonisation and slavery.

Copper believes it’s important to display this uncomfortable side of history and present the interior as it appeared in the 17th century.

“I personally think that we’re showing the house as it was,” she said. “As long as it’s got context around it, this is just showing this is slavery in plain sight.”

9:30pm Tuesday on SBS.