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The old town walls
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Like much else in the city, both the People's Park and Town Wall were allowed to sink into a state of neglect... and by the 1990s, both were decrepit. However, an attempt was made to restore them. The result was truly filmi, with new gates, no reflection of those massive wooden ones that existed not so long ago...
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ACROSS FROM the harbour gates are the homes of three firms long connected with shipping. The oldest of them is Gordon Woodroffe's. The other two are N. Selvaradjalou & Co., dating to 1914, and the more recent J.M. Baxi. Further north is the rather rundown Mariners' Club dating to around a hundred years ago.
Woodroffe's, on its present site from 1868 - and in a building still reflecting signs of its original - may not be a big name in commercial Madras today. But in its day, it was one of the major business houses, its leather factory in Pallavaram one of the largest in the country. Another of its early 20th Century factories was in Colachel, processing palmyrah fibre for export. Branches all along the Coromandel, from Bimlipatnam to Cuddalore, supplied the firm a variety of goods for markets abroad. But for all its export business, it was as a shipping agent that the firm was best known, representing as it did the Clan, Hansa and Wells Lines. For nearly a hundred years, there was a Woodroffe associated with the firm, a connection broken only after Indianisation. But the son of the last Madras-based Woodroffe has holidayed in South India every couple of years for several years now.
This stretch, the most important one of commercial Madras, ended at Clive Battery, built in the early 19th century as a sea-facing defence and named after Edward, the second Lord Clive. Of battery there is none today; there are, instead, only homes built for its officials after the Port was developed. Of even its walls there are few traces, most of them pulled down to make way for the new flyover into Royapuram. The name of the easternmost bastion of the great Town Wall, however, survives in the area.
Work on that wall, to protect the city, effectively the Fort and the `Black Town' to the north of it, began in 1769, though Company Engineer John Call, one of those responsible for planning what Fort St. George looks like today, had begun drawing up plans for the work in 1764 and had even got work started then on a mud wall. Haider Ali's raids in 1767 and 1769, the former led by his son Tippu even threatening Government House, the latter led by Haider himself leaving St.Thomas' Mount, Guindy and San Thome plundered, hastened a decision on the wall. Call was called on to draw up plans post haste for a rampart protecting the northern and western reaches of what is today George Town and even a bit of its south, from the west wall to the Fort. Call's plan envisaged 17 bastions, separated by curtains each 300 yards in extent. Its total length was to be 3 ½ miles.
In a map of today, the wall would be between Clive Battery and Basin Bridge railway station in the north and from the Basin Bridge station to the Central Station - Poonamallee High Road junction in the west, then east to the Fort. Pully Gate at the end of Thambu Chetty Street, Tiruvottriyur (Monegar Choultry) Gate at the end of Broadway and Ennore Gate near Mint Street were the northern gates, Elephant Gate at the end of the street named after it, Chuckler's Gate at the end of Rasappa Chetty Street and Hospital Gate near the General Hospital were the west gates, the six of them the main entrances to the city through this huge fortification. An esplanade was created to an extent of 600 yards beyond the west wall, providing a clear field of fire for anyone besieged, but in later years giving the city much valuable space. The southwest esplanade, for instance, was converted by Governor Sir Charles Trevelyan in 1859 into People's Park, alas, now made non-existent by the city authorities. And the northwest esplanade became Salt Cotaurs. Whatever the latter word means, (and I tend to think it derives from kottu = drop, spill), certainly salt was made here in the late 19th Century. Later, the area became sidings for goods trains.
Within the walls was developed a major road, all along the alignment of the wall, for the speedy movement of men and material in times of emergency. Today, these have become some of the major roads of George Town and include Basin Bridge Road - Old Jail Road - Ebrahim Sahib Street in the north, Wall Tax Road in the west and the General Hospital, end of Ponnamallee High Road in the south, ending at the Fort. Government sought to tax the residents of George Town to build the wall, but public protest as much as the Company's lawyer's view that "the Company have not any power of taxing the Inhabitants" led to second thoughts. Eventually, when word reached the Council that a new Act of Parliament "rendered the Company's servants liable to prosecution in the Court of King's Bench for any oppression of the people", it was decided to build the wall out of its own funds. Recalling the tax that never was collected was the name given to the road along the west wall, Wall Tax Road, a memory now erased through the renaming of it as V.O.C. Road.
The contract for building the road was given to a Company Assistant Engineer, Paul Benfield, who, to bid for the contract, resigned from the service and, in time, became Madras's leading building contractor in the latter half of the 18th Century. Benfield had been "exceedingly well recommended" to the Company as "having been regularly bred as an Architect, Surveyor, Draughtsman, and for his knowledge in Fortification and other Branches of the Mathematiks." He began the work on the wall in June 1769 and by the end of the year the north front was completed. Most of the west wall was completed by the end of 1770. By then the work had cost 165,000 pagodas (about Rs.12.5 million today).
Benfield built well. Most of the wall was pulled down in the second half of the 19th Century, but the bits and pieces left show that he built to last. The Pully Gate and ramparts on either side of it survive on the northern side of Ebrahim Sahib Street, facing Thambu Chetty Street, and even a cursory glance at it will show how solidly Call had wanted it built and how well Benfield met that demand.This is the best preserved part of the wall in the city and is a protected monument of the Archaeological Survey of India. So thick is the wall that, in 1957, a park was developed on its summit. But like much else in the city, both park and wall were allowed to sink into an utter state of neglect in more recent times and by the 1990s both were decrepit. A couple of years ago, however, an attempt was made to restore park and wall, but whoever did it - and I can't imagine the ASI was responsible - the result was truly filmi, with new gates, no reflection at all of those massive wooden ones that existed not so long ago. And as befitting the film set restoration, plaques commemorating the inauguration, restoration etc. have all found a place in a wall whose builders are nowhere remembered!
Benfield went on to other major contracts, including building much of the Fort as it is today and Chepauk Palace. I hold that his work on the latter made him the pioneer of the Indo-Sarasenic School of Architecture. Be that as it may, it was the money that Benfield lent at penal rates of interest to the Nawab Mohammed Ali of the Carnatic that led to scandal of the Carnatic Debts and the grant of the Carnatic to the British by the Nawab in return for their settling his unbelievable debt burden. It was that land settlement that was the first major step towards Empire. But all that's another story
S.MUTHIAH
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