Barbados Wooden Chattel Homes
A House that Could Walk. The Barbados Chattel house arived in the years after emancipation, when liberty came without land. Plantation owners anticipated freed individuals to remain in the exact same location, working the exact same fields, in the same reliance. But Barbados had other concepts-- and so did the people who lived on its walking stick fields and coral plains. Picture , a society of individuals who owned their home, however not the soil below it. The chattel home fixed a contradiction that the colonial system never ever planned to repair. Built on loose coral stones instead of structures, it could be lifted, moved, swung around, installed on a cart, rolled by neighbours, and replanted somewhere else-- typically over night. It was architecture as resistance. Ingenuity disguised as simplicity. A home that refused to be held hostage. The elder leaned forward, decreasing his voice as if sharing a trick. "You understand what a movable house does to an individuals? It teach ...