Tillet block

This wooden block bears the crest of the Sierra Leone Company. Wooden tillet blocks were used to stamp bales of cloth for export to markets across the world. The cloth was wrapped in rough fabric or paper known as tillet and often featured eye-catching designs associated with the area it was bound for.

The Sierra Leone Company founded the second British colony in Africa on 11 March 1792 with 1200 black settlers from Nova Scotia, Canada on land 'purchased' from the Temne.Most of the settlers were former slaves of the American colonies freed by the British during the American Revolution and forced to relocate after the British defeat. Created by Parliamentary consent, the SLC was a shareholding company opposed to the slave trade which aimed to run the new settlement under white rule as a profit-making enterprise.

From the start, the colony was beset with a lack of clear authority, the inability to become self-sufficient, distrust from native communities and discontent from the settlers themselves. When war broke out between Great Britain and France the Company lost vital ships and supplies to privateers and the French navy. In September 1794 the French burned Freetown in a raid. The colonists rebuilt, and American merchants aided by selling the company vital supplies. After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the British government took responsibility of Sierra Leone in 1808 and made it a Crown colony, under direct British rule.