Archbishop of Canterbury committed to £100m slavery fund

This is Dame Sarah’s first pastoral visit to Africa since being installed as head of the Church of England at a ceremony in Canterbury Cathedral in March.

Reparative justice has been one of the themes running through the Ghana leg of this trip.

At Cape Coast Castle, which came under British control in the 1660s, Dame Sarah was shown dungeons where slaves were held, and the so-called “door of no return” through which they were forced on to ships.

The archbishop said: “You can’t help but be deeply moved by the horrific conditions that people were kept in and the way that they were treated.

“It completely throws you off balance and brings home the evil that was transatlantic slavery.”

Above the dungeons sits a chapel, which she said was a “stark illustration of the way the church was involved in the slave trade”.

The Church of England has previously apologised for its associations with the slave trade.

Its missionary arm ran slave-farmed plantations in the Caribbean to fund the spread of Anglicanism, individual members of clergy were slave owners, and the Church received large donations from slave traders.