Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

MADRAS MISCELLANY

Yet another Madras Walk

THE ELIZABETH DE HAVILLAND MEMORIAL Hers was the first burial in St. George's Cemetery

City walks organised by NGOs have still to hit their stride through the institution of regular year-round arrangements. Nevertheless, Mylapore, San Thomé, the Fort, George Town, Poonamallee High Road, Nature in the Guindy and Theosophical Parks, and the Classical Arts are all themes of walks organised in the city three or four times a year. One more trail now offered is “A Walk in the Historic Cemetery of St. George’s Cathedral” and the best part of it is you don’t need a guide — there’s an attractive, well-produced folder, compiled I’m inclined to think by F.V.N. Paul, the Cathedral’s historian, that’s an excellent guide.

The historic 1.75-acre cemetery, now spruced up with the help of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, was opened in 1818 and has over 700 identified British graves in it. Amongst them are some of special interest that the guide indicates.

Perhaps the most beautiful tomb in the cemetery is that of Elizabeth de Havilland, who was also the first to be buried there (14.3.1818). She was the wife of Major Fiott de Havilland who had much to do with the building of both St. George’s and St. Andrew’s. He had earmarked the land for the cemetery when the work on the church was completed in 1815.

THE RESTORED GATEWAY To St. George's Cemetery

Buried here in 1927 was Julian James Cotton who compiled that invaluable source of historical information, List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments In Madras Possessing Historical or Archaeological Interest. First published in 1905, it is, sadly, now out of print. Other significant burials here are: John ‘Deaf’ Binny (1864), who founded Binny’s; Vere Henry Levinge (1885), who developed Kodaikanal; Daniel Corrie (1837), the first Anglican Bishop of Madras; John William Dare (1858), who drove Parry’s growth and who is remembered in the name Dare House; and Norman Robert Pogson (1891), the astronomer who discovered 20 variable stars and ten new minor planets, six of them while he was in Madras. The oldest person buried here is Mary Patterson, aged 105, who died in October 1838.

Much renovation has gone on in the Cathedral over the last couple of years. Now renovated as part of the restoration of the cemetery is its arched gateway, built in 1832, and the Gateway Chapel, whose hundred-year-old pews were refurbished.

Score another for heritage conservation in Madras. It may be a slow process, but it keeps crawling ahead. Who said something about the tortoise?

S. MUTHIAH

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail