Detours: Osterley Park is a pair of guided audio-walks that deconstructs the colonial legacies of Osterley Park, a National Trust estate located in Hounslow, London through their former owners - the Child (later Child-Villiers or Jersey) family - who were closely associated with the English (and later British) East India Company (EIC) for three generations as directors, committee members and stockholders.

Between commissioning objects with private-trade privileges at the EIC, trading precious gems with slave-trading colonial officers, overseeing the Company’s activities of extraction and colonial expansion in South Asia and consequently building the family business into the private bank of Child & Co., the Childs remodelled Osterley into the lavish Georgian mansion that exists today. This banking family was also associated with three East Indiaman¹-namesakes of Osterley that had sailed between Britain and Asia in the 18th century. Between 1761 and 1798, the vessels undertook about nine voyages my hometown of Chennai (formerly Madras)² when it was the coastal capital of the Madras Presidency - one of the three colonial presidencies³ of the EIC in India. The Osterley ships, European transoceanic trade, historic collections housed within the Osterley estate and the exploitative acts of the EIC sanctioned in London and executed in Madras weave together two places situated thousands of miles apart.

The project emerges from the findings of the 2020 National Trust publication titled ‘Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery’.⁴ The report, which revealed details of colonial and slave histories linked to 93 of the Trust’s properties, garnered strong reactions from British audiences for supposedly tainting national identity.⁵ Heritage sites in England, specifically country-houses, are increasingly marketed to audiences as spectacles, creating a significant divide between the socio-political conditions that have shaped these sites and tourist place-consumption.⁶ Despite the National Trust having co-produced literature on Osterley’s colonial connections in the past,⁷ the curation and historic interpretation of the house echo a resounding silence on the power, coloniality and violence that are embedded within and were influential to its form and origins.

My Detour fills this silence with a narration that traces in parallel two histories from the 16th centuryto the present - that of Osterley Park and its broader context within London, and Fort St. George in Chennai as a former British stronghold in the erstwhile Madras Presidency. The narrative audio guides audiences around two sites: Osterley Park and House, and the City of London, in which sits the (now-closed) office of the Child & Co bank.

Informed by critical walking methodologies - specifically walking-with,⁸ performative guided walk-forms of manoeuvres,⁹ misguides¹⁰ and counter-tourism,¹¹ and inspired from the sonic and visual practices of artists Janet Cardiff, Peter Cusack and Ingrid Pollard, the project devises a mode of (de)touring that uses sound, archival material and the format of a tourist audio-walk to answer the research question:

How can sites of heritage-tourism be recontextualised in the land and the people that they were built upon and have profited from?

¹East Indiaman refers to large merchant ships used for trade by European East India Companies.

² “Osterley, east indiaman.” 1757-1770: journals;“Osterley (2), east indiaman.” 1771-1776: journals; “Osterley (3), east indiaman.” 1780-1800: journals. L/MAR/B/400. British Library: Asian and African Studies. St. Pancras.

³ Raikar, Sanat P., and Stanley A. Wolpert. n.d. “Presidencies in British India | Setup, Major Locations, History, & Facts.” Britannica. Accessed November 5, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/topic/presidencies-in-British-India-Bombay-Madras-and-Bengal
⁴ Huxtable, Sally-Anne, Corinne Fowler, Christo Kefalas, and Emma Slocombe, eds. 2020. “Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery.” National Trust, (September). https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/binaries/content/assets/website/national/ pdf/colonialism-and-historic-slavery-report.pdf

⁵Mitchell, Peter. 2020. “The National Trust is under attack because it cares about history, not fantasy” The Guardian, November 12,2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/12/national-trust-history-slavery

⁶ Schmitt, Thomas M. 2022. “The Commodification of World Heritage: A Marxist Introduction.” In: Albert, MT., Bernecker, R., Cave, C., Prodan, A.C., Ripp, M. (eds) 50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict & Reconciliation. Heritage Studies (October): 377-381. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05660-4_29

⁷ Huxtable, Sally-Anne, Corinne Fowler, Christo Kefalas, and Emma Slocombe, eds. 2020. “Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery.” National Trust, (September). Pg. 76. https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/binaries/content/assets/website/national/pdf/colonialism-and-historic-slavery-report.pdf;

Sharma, Yuthika and Davies, Pauline. 2013. ‘'A jaghire without a crime: the East India Company and the Indian Ocean material world at Osterley, 1700-1800.’, East India Company at Home (February 2013), p.88.
https://bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dist/1/251/files/2013/02/Osterley-Park-PDF-Final-19.08.14.pdf;

University College London. 2013. “The Trappings of Trade: Osterley House reveals its gems from the East.” UCL News. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2013/jul/trappings-trade-osterley-house-reveals-its-gems-east

⁸ Springgay, Stephanie, and Sarah E. Truman. 2021. “Podcast Episode 1: Introduction to Critical Walking Methodologies – WalkingLab.” WalkingLab.
https://walkinglab.org/podcast/walkinglab-introduction-to-critical-walking-methodologies/

⁹ Tim Brennan’s ‘maneouvre’ form “exists between traditions of performance art, loco-description, history and as a mode of radical travel-writing” and utilises performative text and images in a guided walk. Brennan, Tim. 1992.

¹⁰ Misguides consist of playful tourist instructions that subvert and disrupt conventional modes of walking in the city. 1997. Wrights & Sites.
http://www.mis-guide.com.

¹¹ In his book, Smith offers tactics for ‘ counter-tourism’ as new ways of engaging with historic sites, against the hegemony of the heritage industry. Smith, Phil. 2012. Counter-Tourism: the Handbook: A Handbook for Those Who Want More from Heritage Sites Than a Tea Shoppe and an Old Thing in a Glass Case. Triarchy Press. https://www.triarchypress.net/counter-tourism-the-handbook.html

Detours: OSTERLEY PARK

Audio-walks in Hounslow and the City, London

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© 2024 Tejesvini Saranga Ravi MA Situated Practice Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL tejesvini.ravi.23@alumni.ucl.ac.uk

© 2024 Tejesvini Saranga Ravi
MA Situated Practice
Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
tejesvini.ravi.23@alumni.ucl.ac.uk