Listed buildings: false narrative on returns from slavery fails to move memorial

The Consistory Court of the Diocese of Ely has dismissed the petition of Jesus College, Cambridge to remove the memorial to Tobias Rustat on the west wall of the college chapel in The Rustat Memorial, Jesus College, Cambridge Application Ref: 2020-056751, a case which has generated considerable public interest. The chapel is a Grade 1 listed building of exceptional interest, and the listing extends to the memorial which is fixed to the building. If the memorial was in a secular space then its removal would require listed building consent, but because the chapel is a place of worship it is subject to the diocesan faculty jurisdiction of the consistory court, which applies similar criteria. The college petitioned on the basis that any harm caused to the chapel as a building of special architectural and historic interest by the removal of the memorial would be substantially outweighed by the resulting public benefits in terms of pastoral wellbeing and opportunities for mission. Rustat’s known involvement in the slave trade from 1663 until shortly before his death in 1694 meant that the continued presence of the memorial in such a prominent position created a serious obstacle to the chapel’s ability to provide a credible Christian ministry. The college intended to relocate the memorial to a more appropriate secular space where it could be properly conserved and protected and become the subject of appropriate educational study and research. The opposing parties contended that the support afforded to the petition from past and current students of the college, and amenity bodies, was the product of a false narrative that Rustat amassed much of his wealth from the slave trade and that such monies were used to benefit the college. The court was satisfied that removal of the Rustat memorial would cause considerable or notable harm to the significance of the chapel as a building of special architectural or historic interest. The college’s justification for its removal was unconvincing: the removal of the memorial was not necessary to enable the chapel to play its role in providing a credible Christian ministry or for it to act as a focus for secular activities and events in the wider life of the college. The widespread opposition to the memorial’s continued presence was the product of a false narrative. The true position, as set out in the joint statement of expert historians, was that Rustat’s investments in companies that had traded in slaved people either brought him no financial returns at all or they were only realised in 1691, 20 years after he had made his gifts to the college, and five years after the completion of the memorial. Such returns comprised only a small part of his great wealth, and they made no contribution to his gifts to the college. The appropriate response to Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade was not to remove the memorial but to retain it in the religious space for which it was always intended with appropriate interpretation and explanation. While any church building must be a “safe space”, that does not mean it should be a place where one should always feel comfortable or unchallenged. Louise Clark is a property law consultant and mediator