Gilt of Cain (London, England)

Vertical photograph of the Gilt of Cain in London, England. The monument consists of seventeen carved granite columns clustered around a granite podium. The curvilinear forms of the columns recall the growing stems of sugarcane.

Dublin Core

Title

Gilt of Cain (London, England)

Subject

Subject (Topic)
Abolition of slavery
England--London
Public art
Public sculpture
Transatlantic slave trade

Subject (Object Type)
Commemorative sculpture

Description

Located near St. Mary Woolnoth Church, where the abolitionist William Wilberforce heard the anti-slavery sermons of the Rev. John Newton, the monument consists of seventeen carved granite columns clustered around a granite podium. The curvilinear forms of the columns recall the growing stems of sugarcane. According to the artists, the position of the columns and podium are meant to suggest a group of people “gathered to listen to a speaker – perhaps the Rev. Newton preaching against slavery, perhaps a trader auctioning his slaves, perhaps William Wilberforce campaigning in front of an audience.” Excerpts from Lemn Sissay's poem, The Gilt of Cain, are etched on the columns. The words are inscribed in the same typography used in early abolitionist literature printed near the site.

Creator

Visocchi, Michael (sculptor), 1977-
Sissay, Lemn (poet), 1967-

Source

Photograph: Wikimedia Commons

Date

September 4, 2008

Contributor

Black British Heritage; Parish of St Mary Woolnoth; City of London Corporation; British Land Company

Rights

Art UK, c/o Staffordshire University Incubator Unit, 2nd Floor, Mellor Building, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 2DE, England

Format

JPEG

Language

English

Type

Visual Arts-Sculpture

Coverage

120 Fenchurch Street, London, EC3M 5BA, England

Has Part

Plaque:
Gilt of Cain by Michael Visocchi & Lemn Sissay

This powerful sculpture was unveiled by the Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu on 4th September 2008. The sculpture commemorates the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, which began the process of the emancipation of slaves throughout the British Empire.

Fen Court is the site of a churchyard formerly of St Gabriel’s Fenchurch St and now in the Parish of St Edmund the King and St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard St. The latter has a strong historical connection with the abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Rev John Newton, a slave-trader turned preacher and abolitionist, was rector of St Mary Woolnoth from 1780 – 1807. Newton worked closely alongside the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce.

The granite sculpture is composed of a group of columns surrounding a podium. The podium calls to mind an ecclesiastical pulpit or slave auctioneer’s stance, whilst the columns evoke stems of sugar cane and are positioned to suggest an anonymous crowd or congregation gathered to listen to a speaker.

The artwork is the result of a collaboration between sculptor Michael Visocchi and poet Lemn Sissay. Extracts from Lemn Sissay’s poem, ‘Gilt of Cain’, are engraved into the granite. The poem skilfully weaves the coded language of the City’s stock exchange trading floor with biblical Old Testament references.

Poem inscribed on work:
"The Gilt of Cain By Lemn Sissay, 2007

Here is the ask price on the closed position,
History is no inherent acquisition
For here the Technical Correction upon the act,
A merger of truth and in actual fact
On the spot, on the money – the spread.
The dealer lied when the dealer said
The bull was charging the bear was dead,
The market must calculate per capita, not head.

And great traders acting in concert, arms rise
As the actuals frought on the sea of franchise
Thrown overboard into the exchange to drown
In distressed brokers disconsolate frown.
In accounting liquidity is a mounting morbidity
But raising the arms with such rigid rapidity,
Oh the reaping the raping rapacious fluidity,
The violence the vicious and vexed volatility.

The roaring trade floor rises above crashing waves:
The traders buy ships, beneath the slaves.
Sway machete back, sway machete again
Cut back the sugar rush, Cain.
The whipsaw it’s all and the whip saw it all
The rising market and the cargo fall
Who’ll enter “Jerusalem” make the margin call for Abel?
Who will kick over the stall and turn the table?

Cain gathers cane as gilt-gift to his land
But whose sword of truth shall not sleep in hand?
Who shall unlock the stocks and share?
Break the bond the bind unbound - lay bare
The truth. Cash flow runs deep but spirit deeper
You ask Am I my brothers keeper?
I answer by nature by spirit by rightful laws
My name, my brother, Wilberforce.

This project was initiated by Black British Heritage and the Parish of St Mary Woolnoth and was commissioned by the City of London Corporation in partnership with the British Land Company.

Medium

Granite

Bibliographic Citation

London Remembers. "Gilt of Cain-Slave Trade." Accessed February 15, 2025. https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/gilt-of-cain-slave-trade.

Rice, Alan. "Chapter One, Tracing Slavery's Routes and Looking Inside the Invisible: The Monumental Landscape and the African Atlantic." In Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic, 1-31. Liverpool University Press, 2010.

Rights Holder

Renée Ater

Still Image Item Type Metadata

Original Format

Sculpture

Citation

Visocchi, Michael (sculptor), 1977-Sissay, Lemn (poet), 1967-, “Gilt of Cain (London, England),” Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past, accessed October 1, 2026, https://slaverymonuments.org/items/show/1165.

Geolocation