Black Prisoners of war

Since 2008 Abigail Coppins has been doing painstaking archival research into the 2500 prisoners of war brought to Britain after being taken on St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada in 1796. She co-curated the permanent exhibition at Portchester Castle about the prisoners which opened in July 2017 and she wrote the content of the English Heritage web pages which you can find here:

Prisoners of War at Portchester Castle | English Heritage

She also wrote the pages in the site guidebook about the prisoners and has conducted numerous tours for schools, community groups, English heritage members and visiting scholars.

Abigail successfully passed her PhD viva in January 2025 and will be publishing a book about the Portchester prisoners in due course. A number of writers have already drawn on and benefited from her research, although they do not always acknowledge her work correctly.