In 1800 there is little doubt that Nathaniel Wells was the richest black man in Britain.

He was the son of a Cardiff-born slave owner and one of his black slaves, and went on to become Sheriff of Monmouthshire and Deputy Lieutenant of the county.

Despite his ethnic background, Nathaniel kept his sugar estates in the Caribbean and gave no special treatment to the Africans he forced to work there. One of the estates was, in fact, accused of handing out illegally cruel punishments to the slaves who worked on them.

Nathaniel's father William Wells came from an old Cardiff family and emigrated to St Kitts, where he was a slave trader and became a wealthy plantation owner.

After his wife died, William Wells began fathering children by his slaves. We know of at least six children, mostly by different women. The rape of female slaves by their owners in the Americas has been well documented, but Anne Rainsbury, curator of Chepstow Museum, says that in this case Wells looked after both the children and their mothers.

"I think his will says an awful lot about him. The first thing he does is his women - they are given their freedom and sums of money to live on," she told a special BBC Radio Wales programme on Welsh links to the slave trade. "He obviously cared about them."

One of the women was even given slaves of her own in the will.

Nathaniel Wells was sent back to Britain for an education and inherited the bulk of his fathers slave estates. He seems to have been accepted by other members of his class in the area around Chepstow, despite his colour.

"He became a country landowner and takes his place in society ... he does what a big landowner of the time would have done and seems to be accepted in that place without comment," said Ms Rainsbury.

He even became a magistrate, sitting in judgement over white people. This was at a time when most black people in Britain's colonies - including Wells' own estates - would have had no right to a court hearing, even if they were raped, beaten or mutilated by their white owners.

While Nathaniel Wells enjoyed his life in high society in Chepstow, his slaves in St Kitts didn't have it so good.

"He was managing those estates like any other absentee planter. He could have been a white planter," says Ms Rainsbury.

From his country seat in Chepstow, Wells would have had little control over the way the slaves he owned were treated. But the punishment of slaves by the manager of one of his estates was singled out for criticism by abolitionists.

"The treatment of the slaves on one of his estates became the subject of an abolitionist tract. A lot of the treatment certainly goes against the amelioration laws," she added.

"There were only supposed to be 39 lashes administered in a certain period of time. He would give 39 lashes plus a 'brining' - putting pepper water on to those lashes - to really make them scream."

The punishment was also administered at illegally frequent intervals.

"The estate was leased out so he would have had no control over it," Ms Rainsbury says. "The first he probably knew about the treatment of the slaves was when he read about it in the abolitionist tract. But he would have been aware of the high death rate among the slaves on this estate. Its hard to imagine what he must have felt."

After he came into his fortune Nathaniel bought the impressive Piercefield House and estate near Chepstow (above).

One story goes that he liked it so much when he was invited for dinner he agreed to buy it there an then for around £90,000 in cash, and then swapped seats with the owner.

The estate was, at the time, famous for the walks and scenic viewpoints which had been developed by an earlier owner of the estate, Valentine Morris.

He was also an absentee plantation owner who owned around 600 slaves in Antigua. He spent some of his wealth on improving agriculture and roads in the area. After leaving Piercefield he became governor of St Vincent, another Caribbean slave island.

Nathaniel Wells married twice and had 22 children. He died in Bath in 1852 at the age of 72.

A memorial tablet can be seen at St Arvan's Church, while Piercefield Park is now the home of Chepstow Racecourse.

Photos courtesy of St Arvan's Church

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