In 1973, my grandparents, Carmen Leotta Walker (née Blenman) and Oscar Frederick Walker, moved their house approximately 300 metres from Tom Bend Road to Clarke’s Gap in Barbados. They moved with their nine surviving children: Anthony, Everton, Hazel, Carolyn, Rosalind, Anderson, Rodney, Sonia, and my mother, Andrea, then aged seven. Two sons, Codgerton and Henderson, had already died.
The Walkers were not simply moving their belongings, but the house itself.
Across Barbados and the wider Caribbean, such structures are known as chattel houses; “chattel” meaning movable property. The word once described enslaved people. In a profound act of reclamation, formerly enslaved people and their descendants built homes that were also movable, responding to a colonial system in which many could own a house, but not the land beneath it.
Designed for mobility, chattel houses rested on blocks rather than foundations. Their timber frames, interlocking panels, decorative fretwork, and louvred windows allowed them to be dismantled, transported, and rebuilt in a single day.
This piece layers a portrait of my grandparents’ chattel house as it stands today with archival family photographs. Beside it is a map tracing the house’s 300-metre journey, mounted with a moveable miniature replica of a traditional Barbadian chattel house.
Why do I love home? Because I take it with me wherever I go.
Include content on QR code to retrace their steps