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In the Nawab's Garden
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Earlier, all of Nandanam and Saidapet, east of Mount Road along with the western edge of the road was known as The Nawab's Gardens.
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ONCE, ALL of Nandanam and Saidapet east of Mount Road and along with western edge of the road was known as The Nawab's Gardens. The Nawab of the Carnatic's parkland even extended across the Adyar River to what is now Kotturpuram. It is however, the former stretch that I travel today, a stretch replete with several 19th Century landmarks, but lacking detailed information about any of them.
Adjacent to the YMCA College is the Cosmopolitan Club's golf course on the site of what was once a cattle pen and slaughterhouse supplying meat to the regiments in and around Madras. The Club dates back to 1873, but when and how the golf course was laid is information that awaits the recording of the history of the Club.
Beyond the golf links is the campus of one of the first modern teachers' training institutions in this part of the world. Started in 1856, it owes its genesis to the Presidency's first Director of Public Instruction, Alexander Arbuthnot, an eminent civil servant and an even better-known founder of sports institutions in Madras. Long associated with education in the Presidency, Arbuthnot was the obvious person to head the Education Department when it was set up in 1855 by Governor Lord Bohart. Arbuthnot was also instrumental in founding the University of Madras in 1857 while in the Department of Education, delivered its first Convocation Address in 1858 and was appointed Vice Chancellor in 1871-72.
Neighbouring the Teachers' Training College is Todhunter Nagar, remembering another old civilian, Charles Todhunter, who had contributed significantly to the growth of the institution. The main tower block of the college, not visible from the road, is in a dilapidated state today and, even after a portion of it collapsed, still cries for restoration. The Mother Teresa University occupies the building today. In not much better condition are the other buildings on the campus. The buildings most visible on Mount Road are the twin curve-fronted structures with verandahs surrounded by Gothic arches and reminiscent of Ice House. These house the school where teacher-trainees gain experience.
Between the College and the Adyar River is the vast acreage that was once the Government Cattle Farm. Today, it is a mess of government buildings, old and new, but on Mount Road is a lone, little cared for ornamental pillar that was part of its grand entrance, testimony to the importance that must have been given to the farm in its day. Across the road from the erstwhile farm was the office of the Collector of `Chinglepet', dating to the days when Saidapet was part of the district. Its courtroom - with stained glass windows, gleaming woodwork and airy spaciousness - was a splendid bit of construction that deserved conservation. But with architectural heritage not being on the Government's priority list, the building was pulled down in 1990 and a tower block of improbable design constructed for Government offices.
More committed to heritage are the family that live in one of the finest examples of 18th /19th Century garden houses in Madras. This house, across the road from the golf course, is arguably, the most striking landmark on this stretch. With high ceilings, tall-pillared verandahs and a classical Madras terrace roof, it is down a more newly-created lane from Mount Road. But all the existing construction, developed literally a-round it in what was once its gardens, makes it totally invisible from the main roads.
Lushington Gardens, this building whose classical lines are wasted on the backdoors of the homes surrounding it, probably owes its name to Charles May Lushington, a civilian who became a Member of Council in 1838. There is, however, also a land grant with reference to the site in 1796 to Stephen Rumbold Lushington, another civilian who later served as Governor of Madras from 1827 to 1832. Lushington Gardens was in later years used as the residence of the Collector of Chinglepet.
Before the Lushington Gardens house was built, probably in the 1830s, the whole area was better known as Anderson's Nopalry. Dr. James Anderson, the physician-general, was an ardent naturalist who in 1786 recommended to the Government the opportunity the cochineal insect provided for the manufacture of a red dye. He urged the Government to grant him land to cultivate the nopal shrub from Mexico which was the best host for the insect. He wrote to the Government, "Being thus in possession of the Nopal, the identical plant on which the Genuine Cochineal is cultivated... I am to recommend... that a Garden be immediately occupied... and denominated The Hon'ble Company's Nopalry". The site granted was where the horses of the European Cavalry had been picketed in the early 1780s.
The land which Anderson eventually fenced in with "a Milk Hedge and Mirgosa Trees" was bounded on "the South East by the road leading to St. Thomas Mount, on the North East by the bank on the long Tank (near Venkatanarayana Road), on the west by the outlet of that Tank, and on the south by the Brooke of Marmalon (the Adyar River)".
Dr. Anderson also proposed that the Government appoint his nephew, Dr. Andrew Berry, as the Superintendent of the Nopalry. It is patent that there's nothing new under the sun, not only in this appointment but also in Government's refusal to sanction 3700 pagodas to repair Morse's Choultry, a stone edifice in ruins in the centre of the land allotted, which he had earmarked to house the plantation workers. It, however, agreed to 500 pagodas worth of repairs to make it a nursery for the insects!
Anderson and Berry got the Nopalry going by 1791, when Anderson turned his attention to sericulture in his own botanical gardens in Nungambakkam. The Nopalry, however, never took off and by 1793 it was decided to devote a part of it to a government botanical garden, Berry experimenting with the rubber tree there. In 1799, Lord Clive the Second, announced that the Nopalry had entirely failed in its objective and would have to be closed. When it was - and its botanical wealth transferred to the Sultan's Garden (Lal Bagh) in Bangalore which the Governor resolved would be the Presidency's main botanical gardens - what was left in Saidapet was plotted and sold for development. Nothing new under the sun again.
S. MUTHIAH
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