A long-standing member of BACSA, Celia Brown is particularly concerned about the condition of the Hill Cart Road Cemetery at Darjeeling, where many of the district’s tea planters are buried. Celia grew up in the area, where her father, Sydney Emmett, managed the Glenburn Tea Estate, which had been created in 1859.

Celia still visits her beloved Darjeeling frequently, most recently in spring 2026. Here she tells us the story of Darjeeling: Part 1 of her article relates its early history, before tea planting became widespread; Part 2 brings us up to the present day.

‘Darjeeling has been described as the ‘Queen of the Indian Hill Stations’ with the Kanchenjunga snow clad massif dominating the town, the surrounding mountains and hills, the people of the area and the planting and manufacture of tea which has played a huge part historically and economically. However, Darjeeling has more to offer – it has a colourful history, having developed from a forest environment, with sparse habitation, into a town carefully planned and built by the East India Company.

The name of Darjeeling is a corruption of Dorje-ling, meaning a place of Dorje, the mystic thunderbolt of the Lamaist religion. A monastery was built on the hill (now named ‘Observatory Hill’), where the Chief Lama governed a Lepcha village of about 100 souls, who farmed and lived a simple religious life. There is a cave in the vicinity, and legend has it that a tunnel runs from there to the Tibetan capital Lhasa.

This was the way of life until the 1800’s, when disagreements, skirmishes and wars over frontier policy erupted in the region.

The birth of Darjeeling: Captain Lloyd

Darjeeling was part of Sikkim, which bordered Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India, then under the control of the East India Company.

In 1828, after resolving a dispute between Nepal and Sikkim, the Governor General’s Representative Lieutenant-General (then Captain) George Lloyd made his way to the Darjeeling spur to explore. For many years the British in Calcutta had begged the government to find a place in the hills to establish a summer resort to escape the intolerable heat of the plains, and to build a Sanatorium.

Lloyd was most impressed by the position and climate of Darjeeling (almost 7,000’ above sea level), and after several visits was sent by the Governor General, Lord William Bentinck, to open negotiations with the Raja of Sikkim for the transfer of Darjeeling for an equivalent in money and land. Negotiations ended with a Deed of Grant from the Raja of Sikkim, written in Lepcha on 25th February 1835:

On 8th February 1836, the Governor General wrote to the King to acknowledge his gratitude, and sent gifts that included a double-barrelled gun, a rifle and some pieces of fine cloth. The Governor General also offered to pay the King an allowance of Rupees 3000 in 1841 (increased to Rupees 6000 in 1846) for the agreed land.

Finally, in 1838, Darjeeling was born.

Aged 76, Lieut.-General Lloyd died on 4 June 1865. As the ‘Discoverer of Darjeeling’ his obelisk tomb, tiered into the steep hillside of the Hill Cart Road Cemetery at Darjeeling, is registered as a by the Archaeological Survey of India (Raiganj Circle).

He is also commemorated on an inlaid mural tablet in St Andrew’s Church.

Developing Darjeeling: Dr Archibald Campbell

In 1839 Dr Archibald Campbell, the British Resident in Nepal, was transferred to Darjeeling as Superintendent. He devoted himself to the task of developing the town, attracting immigrants to cultivate the slopes, and boosting trade and commerce. Settlers were encouraged with grants of forest land, and the population rose from 100 in 1839 to 10,000 in 1849. Immigrants came in large numbers from Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, pleased to have the opportunity to work.

Darjeeling having established itself, the Catholic Archbishop Carey in Calcutta opened two schools, one for girls and one for boys.

On 10th August 1846, a party of five Loreto nuns, dressed in the thick black habits of their order, together with a priest, left Calcutta by river craft with a huge amount of luggage.

The first part of their journey went well. At Kishanganj they made preparations for the difficult forest stage, by hiring 6 palkis and 64 palki bearers. (A palki resembled a box in which travellers could sit upright – it had a roof and side shutters, and was carried by bearers, 4 to each palki).

The palkis travelled by torchlight at night to avoid the searing heat of the day. Staging posts were 12 miles apart, and the bearers averaged 3 miles an hour, singing as they went.

Soon the nuns and priest were on their way. One night, however, the bearers noticed fresh pugmarks on the road. Suddenly there was a cry of ‘bagh bagh’, (‘tiger, tiger’) – immediately, the bearers were off looking for somewhere to hide, leaving the travellers unable to do anything other than pull the shutters down and wait nervously for the bearers to return – which they did, eventually, after what must have seemed like an eternity.

The nuns and priest finally arrived in Darjeeling in October 1846 and opened a school – first at Snow View; later at a much larger Convent, which is still in use. As a novitiate at the Convent, Mother Teresa of Calcutta took her vows there. (Many years later, she left the Loreto Order to embark on missionary work in Calcutta, and founded the worldwide religious order of the Missionaries of Charity).

During the next few years girls and boys boarding schools of various Christian denominations were built to accommodate children from the plains, and latterly from Nepal, Burma and Thailand.

Travelling to Darjeeling

By 1852 a hospital and sanatorium had been built, which encouraged settlers and visitors to travel to Darjeeling.

The journey to get there was still difficult, uncomfortable and full of obstacles. Most people travelled on country boats from Chandpal Ghat in Calcutta, up the Hoogly and the Ganges to Karagola Ghat, which they would reach after a week or so, depending on the weather and currents. From there by palki-dak, pony or bullock cart to Purneah, where travellers might interrupt their journey for a day or two, staying in Dak Bungalows or boarding houses. Ahead of them lay the worst part of the journey, through the Terai Forest, where lurked wild animals and the dreaded mosquito, the cause of so much malaria (or ‘jungle fever’ as it was known then).

Cart Road

As the building of roads was a priority, Dr Campbell appointed Lieutenant Napier (a young Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers; later Lord Napier of Magdala) to construct a new road to Siliguri to accommodate the growing number of bullock carts, which were the main form of transport for carrying goods to and from the plains.

Completed in 1869, the ‘Cart Road’ is still very much in use today. The 2’ gauge Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (the ‘Toy Train’), opened in 1881, follows the alignment of this road for much of its journey to Darjeeling. The original road was the military road, which is still in use.

Tea Plant experiments

At about this time the first experimental stages of growing tea began. Doctor Campbell’s personal experiments in growing China tea seeds in his Darjeeling garden, however, were not successful, probably because of the altitude. Tea seeds were also distributed to interested parties who were prepared to experiment, and it was not long before there was success.

By about 1856 the tea industry had become established. At a later date, Doctor Campbell also experimented with growing coffee, and thought Glenburn Tea Estate with its breadth of altitude would be a perfect place, but this was unsuccessful. To this day there is a section called ‘Coffee Bari’, where Doctor Campbell experimented, and Glenburn is still known locally as ‘Kambal Kaman’ (a corruption of ‘Campbell’s Garden’). In 1860 cinchona plantations were started around Darjeeling. Quinine, extracted from the cinchona bark, was used to treat people affected with malaria.

The idea of planting tea in the Himalayas originated with Brian Hodgson whilst he was resident in Nepal, and tea was successfully grown in the Residence bungalow compound. The favourable result was reported to the Governor General, but the report was unfortunately shelved.

Hodgson later recalled that ‘20 years were suffered to elapse before any effective notice of so important an experiment could be obtained’.

Celia Brown (to be continued)

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‘Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, always described himself as coming from an Anglo-Indian family. Reading the recent BACSA post about Mussoorie’s Camel’s Back Cemetery led me to reflect on some sad tales from my own research trip to India on the trail of the author’s heritage.

, Richard W. Blair and Ida M. Limouzin, were married on the 15th June 1897 in Nainital, a popular hill station with the rare attraction of a natural lake, 345 km northeast of New Delhi. It was an exciting time in Naini as Diamond Jubilee celebrations for the 78-year-old Queen Victoria, Empress of India, were in full swing. This included an event, on the eve of their wedding at St John’s in the Wilderness Church, where a balloon ascended above the lake to 7000 feet before the heavy weather forced the balloonist to parachute spectacularly to safety, as the assembled crowds watched on.

The only relative who attended their wedding was Blanche Limouzin, Ida’s sister, who was working as a teacher in nearby Mussoorie. It is probable that Ida was also working as a teacher in Naini, where she rented Fern Cottage from Mr Elliott, a long-serving and well-respected local principal.

Richard Blair had spent his entire adult life, since the age of eighteen, working in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. The nature of his work, as a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent – ensuring the quality of the supply, collection and distribution of the drug that helped keep the British Empire solvent – became clearer after I read employed in the same work.

On the 25th June 1903, their only son, Eric Arthur Blair, was born in sight of the Himalayan Mountains, at Motihari, where his father was stationed. Their three-room bungalow was conveniently located near a large warehouse (godown) used for storing opium before it was processed and exported to China. Ida must have been greatly saddened that her sister died of pneumonia just two months before Eric was born. Aged 28, Blanche was buried at Camel’s Back Road Cemetery in Mussoorie, on the 13th April 1903.

During the year he spent in India, like most Anglo-Indian children, . While visiting Motihari, I endeavoured to uncover this unknown woman’s identity without success. The photographer, Harry Bailey, had been employed by Johnston & Hoffmann in Calcutta before establishing his own business in Muzaffarpur. He died horribly from an ‘inflammation of the stomach’ a little over a year after taking a photo of baby Orwell.

Harry was buried by the same chaplain, Reginald Yates, who baptised Orwell. I visited the cemetery in Muzaffarpur but could not locate his final resting place.

Orwell really hated and feared rats. His novels, correspondence, diaries and essays detail this obsession. Anyone who has read Nineteen Eighty-Four knows the infamous episode where the protagonist, Winston Smith, is tortured by rats. Oral history indicates that by one as a baby in Motihari.

Young Orwell spent less than a year in India before escaping the plague sweeping Bihar with his mother and sister to England. Other British families in Motihari were not so fortunate.

On 28th March 1904, Richard Blair was transferred to a new station. The following month, Reverend George Hicks wrote ‘death and the grave are never far from the living in India’ after his first-born son, George Gibson Hicks, just three months old, died of dysentery brought on by malaria. Just a few days before his son died in Motihari, Hicks, who was a member of a newly formed interdenominational Protestant evangelical group, the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, had been appointed as registrar for births, deaths and marriages.

Orwell and to India are extensive and largely unknown. is ongoing as one of the keys to understanding Orwell’s outlook and writing is to understand his identity

Orwell constantly read and reviewed books about India and Burma. One book I would encourage you to track down and read is reviewed by Orwell in 1948.

If you are interested in exploring Orwell’s connections to the sub-continent in more depth, here is which includes video of his birthplace.’

Darcy Moore

NOTE ON THE CONTRIBUTOR

‘Darcy Moore received the Peter Davison Award from The Orwell Society for his distinguished research into the life and writings of George Orwell. He has chapters in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to George Orwell and Orwell in Context (Cambridge University Press). Darcy blogs at and his X/Twitter handle is . His Orwell Studies Library can be accessed at Darcy welcomes correspondence: »å´ÚÂá³¾´Ç´Ç°ù±ð°ª²µ³¾²¹¾±±ô.³¦´Ç³¾â€™.

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Â鶹´«Ã½Newsletter readers, family and friends may be interested in the following events:

Date / Time	Event	Place
On now (until Sunday 1 Nov 2026)	‘Journeys through cloth’ Exhibition of textiles from Karun Thakar’s collection ‘centring on Punjabi baghs and phulkari, traditionally embroidered by young girls and women’ at Osterley Park, a National Trust property.	Osterley Park, Jersey Road, London TW7 4RD Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 8 Nov 2026)	‘The last Princesses of Punjab’ Exhibition about the ‘Punjabi princess and suffragette icon’ Sophia Duleep Singh, and ‘the women who shaped her’	Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX. Click for further details, including registration.
On now (until Sunday 13 Dec 2026)	‘Colonial Views of India’ The ‘first exhibition focusing on photographs and negatives in the Ashmolean’, featuring ‘previously unseen photographs of India by Colonel Eugene Clutterbuck Impey (1830-1904)’	Ashmolean Museum (Gallery 29), Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH. Click for further details.
On now	‘The Visakhapatnam Cabinet’ Made from padauk wood in the port city of Visakhapatnam c.1760, this ivory-inlaid cabinet (‘the largest and most ornate piece of furniture of its kind in the National Trust’s collection’) returns to display at Kingston Lacy, a National Trust property, after conservation work at the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio at Knole, Kent.	Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. Click for further details (and directions, eg ‘satnav unreliable; follow B3082 and brown signs’).
On now (until Sunday 21 Feb 2027)	‘Drawn on the Western Front: Paul Sarrut and the Indian Army’ Paul Sarrut, French artist, liaison officer and interpreter with British, French and Indian units ‘lived among the men he drew, capturing daily life at close quarters and offering a rare and personal perspective on the conflict’	National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HT. Click for further details.
From Tuesday 8 Sep 2026 – Sunday 7 Mar 2027	‘A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire’ An exhibition of ‘treasures from the vibrant world of song, poetry and performance of Mughal South Asia from around 1750 to 1850’ .	Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB. Click for further details.
From Saturday 19 Sep 2026 – Sunday 31 Jan 2027	‘Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now’ Sunil Gupta was born in New Delhi in 1953. This major survey exhibition will reveal his ‘pioneering contribution to photography over five decades… in Delhi, Montreal, New York and London’.	Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 0AQ. Click for further details.

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As the tells us: ‘Living among the men he drew, Sarrut captured their daily life at close quarters – in camps, billets and medical stations. He signed and dated most of his sketches, frequently also noting the regiment and location.

Paul Sarrut (1882-1969)
After completing his French national service in the 40th Regiment of Infantry in 1906, Paul Sarrut (1882-1969) studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. By 1909 he was an accomplished professional artist and engraver, exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français.

Two days after the general mobilisation of the French Army in August 1914, Sarrut re-joined from the reserves. Aged 32, Corporal Sarrut was immediately seconded to the British Army as a translator for the Indian and British troops in France.

Posted to Marseille, Sarrut became intrigued by the distinctive uniforms, languages and traditions of the men of the Indian Corps, who started arriving at the end of September. He began drawing simple line sketches of the men on their arrival, their life in camp and their progress north across France to the Western Front.

Captain Amar Singh
By 10 October Sarrut and the 3rd (Lahore) Division had reached Cercottes, just north of Orléans. Here Sarrut began drawing more detailed studies of officers and other ranks of the Indian Army, frequently annotated with their names. One in particular, dated 16 October 1914, depicts Captain Amar Singh, who served as an aide-de-camp with the 9th (Sirhind) Brigade, and kept a diary describing his unit’s part in the fighting on the Western Front.

Mohan Ram
Sarrut spent much of the winter of 1914-15 in the town of Locon, 8km north of Béthune, in Pas-de-Calais. Mohan Ram, drawn on 2 November 1914, was one of the dholi (stretcher) bearers whose work was seriously impacted by the very cold weather.

Sepoy Harnam Singh
One of the best-known images of a WW1 Indian soldier is that of Sepoy Harnam Singh, of the 34th Sikh Pioneers, whose portrait Sarrut sketched on 7 November 1914. Tragically Harnam Singh was killed in action later that month. Sarrut noted that Harnam Singh was a ‘T²¹°ù°ì³ó²¹²Ô’ [ ਤਰਖਾਣ ], a carpenter by trade.

(The also tells us that he was the son of Mahtab Singh, of Todar Majra, Kharar, Ambala, Punjab; his Service No. was 1756, and he is commemorated on Panels 29 and 30 of the Indian Memorial at Neuve Chapelle, in Pas-de-Calais).

Sarrut continued sketching the men of the Indian Corps until they were redeployed to Mesopotamia at the end of 1915. Continuing to serve as an interpreter, he sketched British officers and NCOs at Amiens until he was demobbed in 1919.

The NAM exhibition also includes uniforms, photographs, medals and archival material providing additional insight into the people, places and events captured in Sarrut’s drawings. Medals on display include the Victoria Crosses awarded to Lieutenant Frank de Pass, the first Jewish recipient, and to Sepoy Khudadad Khan, who was both the first Muslim, and the first soldier from the Indian subcontinent, to receive the award. Extracts from the diary of Jemadar Kirpal Singh of the 34th Sikh Pioneers, read in Punjabi by his grandson Dr Gurpreet Singh, form part of the interactive displays’.

Click for more information about the National Army Museum and this exhibition, which runs until 21 February 2027.
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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)
Rachel Magowan

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‘Do not worry about me. I am in paradise here’ (From a letter home, written by a wounded Indian Army soldier being treated at the Royal Pavilion War Hospital, Brighton, in 1915.)

A group of Â鶹´«Ã½members recently visited the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, well-known as the Prince Regent’s South Coast ‘party palace’, for a bespoke tour focusing on the building’s Indian-influenced architecture and its period as a World War I Hospital for Indian Army soldiers.

After a general introduction to the building’s history, our guide Jane led us through the maze of sumptuous ground floor reception rooms and enormous kitchens to the upstairs gallery displaying photographs, paintings, film footage and contemporary accounts from 1915, when the Royal Pavilion suddenly became home to over 2,000 wounded soldiers from the Indian Army.

How did this extraordinary, mock Indo-Saracenic building acquire such a role? Having selected Brighton, with its healthy sea air, as the ideal location for a complex of military hospitals, Sir Walter Lawrence (who had been appointed Commissioner for ‘Sick and Wounded Indians in England and France’, by Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War), met the Corporation in November 1914 to discuss suitable sites.

After rejecting their suggestions of the racecourse and the pier (‘I wanted something with a roof’), and finding local hotels to be ‘unsuitable and costly’, he accepted their proposal for three sets of buildings to be repurposed as military hospitals: the Royal Pavilion – which the municipality had purchased from Queen Victoria in the 1850s – together with the adjacent Dome and Corn Exchange buildings; the Workhouse at Elm Grove (rapidly renamed ‘Kitchener Hospital’), and the York Place and Pelham Street Schools.

The Royal Pavilion was the first of these wartime hospitals to open. Opulent peacetime furniture was placed in storage; dado screens were erected to protect the wallpaper and paintwork. Within a fortnight the Pavilion accommodated over 700 hospital beds: the ‘South Drawing Room’, for example, was designated ‘Ward 2’; the ‘Music Room’ (the rich red and gold wall paintings of which form the backdrop to our Â鶹´«Ã½group photo) became ‘Ward 5’, where a contemporary oil painting depicted three patients well enough to sit up on chairs chatting to their less fortunate comrades in beds. An Operating Theatre was set up in the ‘Great Kitchen’; X-ray equipment was installed, and new plumbing and toilet facilities were established.

As the Brighton Gazette reported, on 14 December 1914 hospital trains transported the first 345 invalids – including over 100 stretcher cases – from the Western Front to Brighton Station, where they were met by motor ambulance and driven to the Pavilion. During the following year around 2,300 wounded Indians were treated at the Pavilion; over 300 surgical operations, including removal of bullets and shrapnel, and limb amputations, were carried out.

As well as their medical needs, attention was paid to the patients’ religious and cultural needs. Notices throughout the hospital were printed in Urdu, Hindi and Gurmuki. Separate water supplies were created for Muslims and Hindus. Several kitchens were set up in the grounds, so that food could be cooked by patients’ co-religionists and fellow caste members. Laundry was performed by dhobis in a special building on the eastern lawn. A tented gurdwara was established for Sikhs, and prayer areas for Muslims were created on the lawns.

Gazing at the lavish décor of the walls and ceilings, the patients in the hastily repurposed wards sometimes found their environment verging on the surreal. One soldier wrote home: ‘Do not worry about me. I am in paradise here’. And as Subedar Major Sardar Bahadur Gugan of the 6th Jats wrote in early 1915:

‘Everything is such as one would not see, even in a dream. One should not regard it as a fairyland. The heart cannot be satiated with seeing the sights, for there is no other place like this in the world. It is as if one were in the next world… I have never been so happy in my life as I am here’.

Undoubtedly more comfortable than tented accommodation on the pier, the Pavilion’s huge domes, chattri-topped minarets and cusped arches reinforced this sensation. How had ‘Prinni’s mad wedding-cake’ ever come to be built?

On being advised, in 1786, to seek out the healthy properties of seawater for his swollen glands, the young Prince George – already notorious for his extravagant lifestyle – had purchased a ‘seaside lodging house’ at Brighton, preferring a town which offered opportunities for horse-racing, gambling, dining and dancing to the more sedate Weymouth (where his sickly father usually convalesced).

Initially Prince George had his house converted into a ‘modest villa’, by the architect Henry Holland, and named it ‘Marine Pavilion’. Then, in 1807, he visited , in Gloucestershire, and fell in love with the possibilities of full-on Indo-Saracenic architecture.

A Jacobean manor, Sezincote (site of a possible future Â鶹´«Ã½visit?) had been purchased by John Cockerell, retiring in 1796 after a military career in India. Sensing that he was ‘perishing for want of the light and heat of India’, John had talked about enlarging the windows, but died before this could be done. His brother Charles, a former East India Company administrator familiar with Thomas Daniell’s 18thc paintings of Oriental Scenery, took over the house, and arranged for the exterior to be redesigned in the ‘High Mughal style of North India’, combining features from both Hindu and Islamic architecture. These included octagonal columns and capitals; chattri minarets, peacock-tail fan windows, a chajjia cornice, and jali-work railings, all of which captivated the Prince.

In 1811 King George III was declared mentally unfit, and Prince George became the Prince Regent. Intending to host large-scale social events, he had his ‘modest villa’ in Brighton transformed into a magnificent ‘oriental palace’ by John Nash, little imagining that one day it would provide a very welcome convalescent home to thousands of wounded Indian soldiers.

The medical connection with the the Pavilion came to an end in 1916, after the Indian Army had been redeployed to the Middle East.

Our enjoyable morning tour over, the Â鶹´«Ã½group left via the Indian Gate ‘the gift of India in commemoration of her sons who – stricken in the Great War – were tended in the Pavilion in 1914 and 1915’ and repaired to the nearby Dishoom Permit Room for lunch.

The Chattri

Erected on the site where the 53 Hindus and Sikhs who died in Brighton’s wartime hospitals were cremated, the Chattri memorial at Patcham, on the South Downs, commemorates the Indian dead of World War I (including Muslim patients who were buried at the Shah Jahan mosque in Woking).

The spectacular site, which is 500’ feet above sea level, is currently accessed by a path off a bridleway from the A27 Brighton Bypass. Sadly, heavy rain on the day put paid to the Â鶹´«Ã½group’s initial plan for an afternoon hike to visit the chattri.

Click for further details about the memorial, and information about the Annual Remembrance service organised by the Chhatri Memorial Group.

(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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Founded by Frederick Young in 1823, Mussoorie – occasionally vying with Simla and Ooty for the title ‘Queen of the Hill Stations’ – perches about 4,500’ above Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Mussoorie’s Camel’s Back Cemetery owes its memorable name to a curiously semi-bactrian shaped rock formation on the 1845 Camel’s Back Road, a peaceful 3km stretch between Library Chowk and Kulri Bazaar (via the notorious ‘Scandal Point’), overlooking forested slopes with spectacular views of snow-capped Himalayan peaks.

Originally entitled ‘Talking Tombstones’, the following article about Camel’s Back Cemetery by Ganesh Saili, the renowned Mussoorie-born writer and photographer, was recently published in the Garhwal Post:

“‘You have reached your destination!’ my GPS awakens me. Certainly not the pleasantest kind of thing to hear outside the lychgate of a cemetery. Let me warn the reader that we have reached the Camel’s Back Cemetery, where under a forest of cypress trees rest the bones of the minions of the empire.

In front of the caretaker’s shack is the impressive tomb of Sir Henry Bohle, dated 1851. He was a wealthy brewer, and is credited with starting the Bohle’s Brewery below Lyndale or Bansi estate – our first brush with beer.

Below the first bend in the road lies John A Hindmarsh, one of the hundred survivors from the Charge of the Light Brigade. On 16 April 1890 he was in his 59th year, when he was laid to rest by just two undertakers – Mr JC Fisher and Mr HE Hathaway. Both later declared that if only they had known, ‘they would have marshalled the whole station to pay final tribute to this gallant survivor’.

To this day, no one knows what Hindmarsh was doing in Mussoorie or where he lived.

The inscription on his grave reminds you that he was ‘One of the Six Hundred’. This reference is to the Crimean War of 1854, where at Balaclava, misinterpreting a command, the cream of the British cavalry charged to certain death to the boom of Russian guns. We have Tennyson’s immortal lines commemorating the moment:
‘Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon behind them,
Volleyed and thundered;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well,
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of the six hundred.’

Six years later, his wife, Amelia, came to rest beside him.

Who would dare creep past the grave of Gulabi, a girl from Mukba (a village along the Bhagirathi), who married Frederick E Wilson, also known as the Rajah of Hursil (he minted his own coins). She had been baptised as ‘Ruth Wilson’ to ensure that she would be buried on consecrated ground in 1899. Her husband had left this world a few years earlier, on 24 July 1883, aged 66 years and 7 months.

On a knoll facing the rising sun is buried John Lang, the Australian born author and barrister, who spent the last years of his life in Landour, and is remembered for his defence of the Rani of Jhansi in her case against the Doctrine of Lapse with the Company. She had rewarded him with: ‘A thousand guineas, besides such presents as shawls, dresses, ornaments’, and presented him with ‘a mosaic portrait of the Rani in precious stones.’

‘Who was this Hooper?’ Asks Professor Vidya Sagar Sharma, five years my senior in Allen Memorial School. ‘Why is our assembly hall named after him?’ he asks, not expecting an answer, as so far all Vidya’s efforts have elicited is a standard form letter stonewalling him: ‘Unfortunately records from the past are sketchy or often non-existent’.

I am intrigued. Usually I don’t take much interest in plaques bearing the names of those gone before. They reveal, if at all, so little. It is just not my kind of thing.

This time, while trawling the hill station’s history I find quite a few rare gems. Born in 1837, Reverend William Hooper was a man for all seasons, a Boden Sanskrit Scholar from Oxford University, who went on to become the Principal of Allahabad’s Divinity School. In his fifties, he arrived in the hill station and spent thirty-two years here, authoring his Hebrew-Hindi and Greek-Hindi dictionaries until he passed away in 1922, aged eighty-five years, having lived out his last years in the parsonage next to the church that is no longer a church, in a castle that is no longer a castle, and in a hill station that is just another hill.

Of course, there are twenty lakh graves just like these that are scattered across this subcontinent. They are permanent reminders that men and their matters perish.

These mountains, however, will remain forever”.

Click to read Ganesh’s article in the Garhwal Post. Many thanks to Anabel Loyd, writer on South Asia, and Rosemary Raza, a long-standing member of Â鶹´«Ã½(and for many years our much-appreciated Events Organiser), for sending us the details.
 
Ed Notes:

Ganesh Saili

Ganesh Saili, who tells us that he lives on ‘Frederick Young’s potato patch’ at nearby Landour, has written over two dozen books. His Mussoorie Medley: Tales of Yesteryear, published in 2010 by Nyogi Books, is ‘full of lively anecdotes about the hill station’s history, people, eccentrics, scandals – everything that makes the place unique’.

Padma Shri Hugh Gantzer 1931-2026

Hugh Gantzer, who had been living at Mussoorie since childhood, became a Commander in the Indian Navy, and served as Judge Advocate of the Southern Naval Command.

After retiring in 1974, Hugh embarked on a joint travel-writing career with his wife Colleen, fulfilling a commission to write a book on Kerala for the India Tourism Development Corporation.

Over the next 50 years they co-authored over 30 books, numerous articles and documentaries.

A ‘fierce protector of the Himalayas’ (and a member of BACSA), Hugh served as a member of the Supreme Court-constituted monitoring committee to track environmental issues in the Doon Valley and Mussoorie.

In 2025 Hugh and Colleen were jointly awarded Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours, for their work in the field of travel journalism.

Hugh died in February 2026 and was buried, with due ceremony, in the family plot at Camel’s Back Cemetery. Click to read an article by Sunil Sonker in the Garhwal Post describing the event.

Rachel Magowan
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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)

The post Taking the Camel’s Back Road appeared first on BACSA.

St Mary’s ‘Cemetery on the Island’ in Chennai is well known to Â鶹´«Ã½members – click here to read about the dramatic, BACSA-funded conservation work on the Anderson Memorial in 2024.

But did you know that this Cemetery is also the scene of the action-packed, climactic showdown between police and villains in the 1980 Tamil crime film Billa? That, and the preceding car chase through the streets of Chennai, from Egmore Station, along Anna Salai (Mount Road) to Marine beach make spectacular viewing for anyone interested in the built heritage of Madras / Chennai. Sriram Venkatakrishnan, a businessman, historian of Chennai and freelance journalist (whose byline is ‘Sriram V’), has produced a YouTube video describing the history of the many landmark buildings – state, commercial and residential – along the 1980 car chase route.

Some, such as the Kandans Building, have been carefully conserved; others, like the Kardyl Building, are now dilapidated, in need of conservation; and yet others, such as the Wellington Theatre, have disappeared completely in the course of the last forty-odd years.

The breakneck journey begins on Poonamalee High Road. After passing Egmore Station and Central Station, we catch sight of Southern Railway Headquarters. Then the villain-driven white limo – with a distinctive red roof – suddenly swerves towards NSC Bose Road, revealing the Bombay Mutual Building in the background. Describing it as ‘a house with a history…’ Sriram explains how this Art Deco building, designed by Coromandel Engineering in the 1950s, is located on the site of the 1850s Madras Christian College, later known as ‘Anderson’s Hall’, and subsequently purchased by the Travancore National and Quilon Bank – until bankruptcy led to it being auctioned off by the Chennai Government.

Making a sudden U-turn, the car then passes the High Court, before heading down Mount Road, yielding fine views of all the buildings on both sides. We see Whiteaway and Laidlaw, a large department store which sold ‘everything from clothes to furniture’, and has since been replaced by an apartment block. Next to it is the Indo-Saracenic ‘Indian Airlines Building’ formerly known as ‘Dowkers Showroom’ (the home of a Gujerati jewellery company), which was built by Henry Irwin in the early 20th century, and has now been replaced by an LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) building. The nearby D’Angelis Hotel, Chennai’s first 5-star hotel, has become a Bata showroom.

Nostalgia has its downsides too. Past the General Patters Road turnoff, we spot the old Wellington Theatre, where all films from Gemini Studios were released. ‘Wow, how many movies have we watched at the Wellington Theatre? How many movies have we watched while enduring the stench coming from the toilet?’ muses Sriram, explaining that the site of so many moving, if malodorous, memories, is now the home of Wellington Plaza. Behind it is the Kardyl Building, formerly office of W E Smith & Co, Pharmaceutical Chemists ‘by appointment to his Excellency the Governor of Madras’, whose contemporaries may have gone there to purchase supplies of 19th century patent remedies such as ‘Smith’s Specific for Diarrhoea and Dysentery’; ‘Dr Furnell’s Improved Liver Pills’, or even ‘cholera drops’. Sadly, this particular building is now ‘in a dilapidated condition’; however there are plans afoot for renovating it.

And some of the older buildings are clearly cherished – the Kandans building erected by Simpson and Company in the early 20th century is now owned by BST Motors, and ‘very beautifully maintained’ as a Mercedes-Benz showroom.

Sriram’s insights and anecdotes continue along the route of the car chase, with at least one of the villains now astride a white horse, galloping ferociously through the hectic city traffic. They eventually reach Marina beach and Napier Bridge – (only 2-lanes in 1980, now widened to 3-lanes).

The climax of the film takes place in St Mary’s Cemetery – initially glimpsed as ‘a large, bare forest, a place with only trees, bushes and plants’. Once inside, though, Sriram is struck by the atmosphere, and the many memorials, including that to Dr James Anderson. ‘He came to this place in the 18th century as a doctor. But he has become a botanist. He was the one who established India’s first botanical garden in Nungambakkam and later shifted it to Saidapet. Anderson’s Road is still in Nungambakkam. His memorial is large…’

The irony of a botanist’s memorial incorporating vegetation strikes him:‘How should a monument to a botanist be built? Should a tree grow in that spot? A large tree has grown over that monument. It looks like Angkor Wat.’

As Â鶹´«Ã½members will recall, in 2024 Jeernodhar conservators had to tread a fine line in dealing with invasive vegetation that had become integral to the structure of the monument which they were trying to conserve: ‘If you cut down that tree the monument will collapse. If you demolish the monument, the tree will fall down’. They resolved it, for the foreseeable future, by limiting future growth. As Sriram says: ‘They have kept both as they are’.

He concludes by paying tribute to Â鶹´«Ã½and the additional conservation work now under way elsewhere at St Mary’s:

‘This cemetery was in a very bad condition, but in England there is an association called the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, whose job is to maintain all the cemeteries in Asia, especially in South Asia. They are now taking many steps and this St Mary’s Cemetery on the Island is now being renovated’.
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‘History Time with Historian V Sriram’ (21 mins)

You can see Sriram’s full 21-minute video, with its carefully chosen clips from ‘B¾±±ô±ô²¹â€™, on YouTube (Click Settings (cog wheel symbol) / Subtitles / Auto-translate / English to read the Tamil commentary in English – or choose any of the languages listed. As you watch the film, be prepared to hit ‘Skip’ (bottom right) if you prefer to jump past unwanted adverts). If you would like to see more of Sriram’s work, please consider subscribing to his channel – he mentions that he has posted videos based on 1940s and 1960s Madras films too.

‘From Billa to BACSA!’ (5 mins)
Click to download and see ‘From Billa to BACSA!’, a BACSA-special 5-minute extract from Sriram’s video – reworked with English-language commentary. It features the 1980 cinematic clips shot in St Mary’s Cemetery (didn’t it look tidy back then!), the Anderson Memorial before its 2024 conservation, and BACSA’s role in cemetery conservation projects throughout South Asia.

St Mary’s Cemetery (2 mins)
And if you’re tempted to visit St Mary’s Cemetery yourself, this 2-minute 2024 by Â鶹´«Ã½Member Andrew Whitehead will help you find it.
Rachel Magowan

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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)

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Â鶹´«Ã½Newsletter readers, family and friends may be interested in the following events:

Date / Time	Event	Place
On now (until Sunday 21 June 2026)	‘Painters, Ports and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850’ Exhibition featuring ‘over 100 objects from Asia’, including ‘rich opaque watercolours, large-scale oil portraits, evocative architectural drafts’ and a ‘spectacular’ 37′ long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow.	Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 1 Nov 2026)	‘Journeys through cloth’ Exhibition of textiles from Karun Thakar’s collection ‘centring on Punjabi baghs and phulkari, traditionally embroidered by young girls and women’ at Osterley Park, a National Trust property.	Osterley Park, Jersey Road, London TW7 4RD Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 8 Nov 2026)	‘The last Princesses of Punjab’ Exhibition about the ‘Punjabi princess and suffragette icon’ Sophia Duleep Singh, and ‘the women who shaped her’	Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX. Click for further details, including registration.
On now (until Sunday 13 Dec 2026)	‘Colonial Views of India’ The ‘first exhibition focusing on photographs and negatives in the Ashmolean’, featuring ‘previously unseen photographs of India by Colonel Eugene Clutterbuck Impey (1830-1904)’	Ashmolean Museum (Gallery 29), Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH. Click for further details.
From Monday 1 Jun 2026, 10:30-15:00	‘The Visakhapatnam Cabinet’ Made from padauk wood in the port city of Visakhapatnam c.1760, this ivory-inlaid cabinet (‘the largest and most ornate piece of furniture of its kind in the National Trust’s collection’) returns to display at Kingston Lacy, a National Trust property, after conservation work at the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio at Knole, Kent.	Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. Click for further details (and directions, eg ‘satnav unreliable; follow B3082 and brown signs’).
From Monday 8 Jun 2026 – Monday 13 Jul 2026	‘The relentless rise of the East India Company’ Lecture tour by the historian William Dalrymple, covering ‘more than two hundred years of tumultuous colonial history, covert political machinations, and bloody resistance’	Lectures will be held at venues in: Birmingham, Chester, Tunbridge Wells, Guildford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Malvern. Click for further details (and to purchase tickets).
Sunday 14 Jun 2026, 2pm-3pm	‘Indian Forces Chattri Memorial Service’ Memorial Service in remembrance of ‘the Indian and Nepalese soldiers from Undivided/Prepartitioned India who were cremated in Brighton during the First World War’	Indian Forces Chattri Memorial, Patcham Down, Standean Lane, Brighton BN1 8ZB. Refreshments afterwards at Hove Albion Football Club, American Express Stadium, Village Way, BN1 9BL. Click for further details.
Thursday 18 Jun 2026, 11:30am – 4:00pm	‘Â鶹´«Ã½Visit to Brighton Pavilion’ Tour of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, emphasising its ‘Indian-influenced architecture, and its time as a WW1 War Hospital for Indian Army soldiers.’	Royal Pavilion, Brighton, Sussex BN1 1FN. Click here for further details, and to make a booking.
Saturday 27 Jun 2026, 10:00am-15:00pm	‘FIBIS Open Meeting and AGM’ FIBIS (Families in British India Society) Open Day and AGM. Lectures include ‘Curzon’s Chosen Men’ (Alan Dillon); ‘Mutiny 1857 – the Indian Perspective’ (Rosie Llewellyn-Jones) and ‘With Ox Carts & Dooli Bearers – Medals of India to 1947’ (Nathan Smith)	Union Jack Club, Sandell Street, London SE1 8UJ. Click for further details, including registration.
From Wednesday 1 Jul 2026 – Friday 31 Jul 2026	‘South Asian Heritage Month 2026’ Launched at Cardiff University’s Bute Building on 26 April 2026, this year’s SAHM theme is ‘#UnityInDiversity’. ‘Our histories are different. Our experiences are varied. But the values that run through us, family, resilience, hospitality, belonging, connect us all. This July, we celebrate exactly that’.	Use ‘#UnityInDiversity’ ‘#SouthAsianHeritageMonth’ and ‘#SAHM2026’ on social media to sign up to the SAHM Newsletter, find out how to get involved, and learn about planned SAHM events.
From Tuesday 8 Sep 2026 – Sunday 7 Mar 2027	‘A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire’ An exhibition of ‘treasures from the vibrant world of song, poetry and performance of Mughal South Asia from around 1750 to 1850’ .	Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB. Click for further details.
From Saturday 19 Sep 2026 – Sunday 31 Jan 2027	‘Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now’ This major survey exhibition will reveal Sunil Gupta’s (b. 1953, New Delhi) ‘pioneering contribution to photography over five decades… in Delhi, Montreal, New York and London’.	Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 0AQ. Click for further details.

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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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‘A Â鶹´«Ã½sign was recently placed at the gate to the Anglican Cemetery, Christ Church, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India.

It shows that Â鶹´«Ã½has supported conservation at the cemetery and is part of the initiative announced at BACSA’s Annual General Meeting in March 2025. The programme aims to have signs mounted at more than 20 historic cemeteries, mostly in India, that have received Â鶹´«Ã½support in recent years.

Some burial grounds in the Indian Subcontinent display signs stating that they have received Â鶹´«Ã½support, but the Association itself has not provided its own sign up till now. It needed to demonstrate publicly its support that helps to sustain the Subcontinent’s built heritage and history. The signs will also raise BACSA’s profile in the conservation community and more widely. Made of acrylic material and weather-resistant, the sign is made by the Delhi company that supplies the Commonwealth War Graves Commission signs.

Â鶹´«Ã½first supported Salem’s cemetery in 2008 and makes an annual grant towards the cemetery’s maintenance. As part of Christ Church’s 150th anniversary in 2025, the Church and the Salem Historical Society embarked on a comprehensive conservation project to include strengthening the boundary wall, erecting a new main gate, and attending to all the graves. Â鶹´«Ã½will contribute £6,800 towards the costs.

Dating from the 1790s, the cemetery covers an area of 6,203 sq yds/5,186 sq m. It contains 131 graves that typically reflect the lives and deaths of those in East India Company service and their families, missionaries and merchants.

A fine obelisk tomb is that of Lieut Colonel Oloff Fehrszen who died of cholera in 1820. An officer in HM’s 53rd Foot, he had fought in the Peninsular War and guarded Napoleon on St Helena. A family tragedy was that of Captain Henry Bevan of the 27th Native Regiment Infantry: his wife Mary Ann and daughters Emma, Julia and Adel were victims of cholera within the space of three days in 1837. A grief-stricken Captain Bevan left for England. The Revd Henry Crisp who died in 1831 having been the London Mission Society’s first missionary in Salem, joined his wife Eliza who had died in 1829. Crisp was succeeded by the Revd George Walton who died in 1841 following his wife Anna, 1838. She was mother to eight children.

Click here to see details of BACSA’s illustrated book The Old Anglican Cemetery, Salem Tamil Nadu, by Denise Love, which includes an introduction to the history and restoration of the Cemetery, the history of the British Settlement of Salem, and detailed, researched histories of the individuals buried in the conserved graves.

Other cemeteries receiving signs include the Cantonment Cemetery, Ambala; Jhansi Cantonment Cemetery; Cemetery No 2 , Lansdowne; Lovedale Cemetery, The Nilgiris; St James’s Churchyard, Delhi’.

Peter Boon

Ed. note: Click here to see the Â鶹´«Ã½Newsletter article published on 18/4/25, covering earlier Â鶹´«Ã½projects at Salem, and the church’s proposed September 2025 sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary events.

Rachel Magowan

(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)

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Valerie Haye, of the British in India Historical Trust, has supplied the following details of a live lecture being given on Tuesday 26 May 2026, by Sam Dalrymple:

SHATTERED LANDS: FIVE PARTITIONS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN ASIA
Sam Dalrymple
Tuesday 26 May 2026 11:30am-1:00pm
University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, Mayfair, London W1K 1DB

11:30am: Meeting/refreshments
12:00 noon: Lecture
1:00pm: Lunch (optional)

‘As recently as 1928 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait were bound together as the Indian Empire. It was the British Empire’s crown jewel: a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population’.

‘And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart: carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division’.

‘Shattered Lands presents the story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches’.

Sam Dalrymple is a Scottish historian, film-maker and activist. The son of historian William Dalrymple, he grew up in Delhi, and graduated from the University of Oxford as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar.

His work has been published in the New York Times, TIME, New Yorker and Economist. His book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, was an international bestseller, and a ‘Best Book of 2025’ for the Financial Times, The Week, Spectator, BBC History Magazine and History Today.

This lecture is presented in association with the Indian Civil Service Society.

Tea and coffee (self-serve and included in the ticket price) will be available in the Library on arrival. At 11.45 am there will be a short meeting for members of the (and anyone interested in joining).
The lecture will be presented in the Library at 12 noon. For those who would like to stay, an optional two-course meal (main course, dessert and coffee) from 1pm to 2.30pm will follow in the Drawing Room. Drinks can be purchased separately from the pay bar in the Drawing Room after the lecture. Dietary requirements accommodated where notified. Dress code: smart casual. All welcome.

Tickets for the lecture cost £15. Tickets for the lecture and meal cost £65.
Bookings for the meal close on 21 May.
Bookings for the lecture close on 23 May.

HOW TO BOOK
Click to book tickets online by card (fees apply), by bank transfer or by cheque.

Valerie Haye, British in India Historical Trust

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(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)

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Our tour was arranged by Â鶹´«Ã½Chairman Paul Dean, and led by Dr Jennifer Howes, an art historian whose book (Routledge, 2023) has recently become available in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren to replace the building destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, St Paul’s Cathedral was completed in 1710. The cathedral floor was intended to be an open area, with monuments located in the crypt. This changed in the 1790s, when Parliament demanded that St Paul’s be used to commemorate Britain’s heroes of empire. The Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s stipulated that the ‘first four’ floor memorials should be to ‘men of knowledge’, and placed at the NW, NE, SE and SW crossing points below the dome.

1799: William ‘Orientalist’ Jones (1746-1794)

A prominent Orientalist scholar, William Jones, a Judge on the Bengal Supreme Court at Calcutta, studied Sanskrit at Varanasi and established the Asiatic Society, sponsoring the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita and triggering ‘an outpouring of scholarship on the civilisation of what Jones called ‘this wonderful country’ (Dalrymple, 2019).

Jones died in 1794, and was buried at South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta.

Commissioned by the EIC, a memorial honouring him was executed in white marble by John Bacon the Elder (1740-1799), and installed under the SW corner of the dome of St Paul’s in 1799.

Wearing a toga, Jones holds a quill in one hand; a scroll labelled ‘Plan of the Asiatic Society’, in the other. He leans on a copy of his book ‘The Institutes of Hindu Law’, which rests on a podium decorated with the scales and sword of Justice, and a lyre – symbols of his legal career, and early poetic writing. The plinth below shows three images reflecting his later interest in Indian languages and culture – a young woman dressed in a sari – personifying the Ganges; flanked by Brahma and the Kurma Avatar of Vishnu.

In contrast to the military memorials it had commissioned for Westminster Abbey, the EIC here presented its support for the peaceful, civilising activities of the late 18thc ‘Oriental Renaissance’. The inscription mentions the Company’s gratitude for Jones’s public services; admiration for his ‘genius and learning’, and respect for his ‘character and virtues’.

Positioning Jones’s memorial in such a prominent location, grouped with Baker’s memorials for John Howard, prison reformer and philanthropist, and Samuel Johnson, poet, scholar and lexicographer (which were already in situ in the SE and NE points under the dome), ‘suggests an appreciation of scholarly assiduity and a humanitarian, tolerant, facet of British rule in India’.
 
1826: Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie (1766-1814)

Noted for his exploits in the West Indies, Java and India, Gillespie, aged 48, was killed in 1814 during the Battle of Kalunga, following which he was buried at Meerut.

Parliament moved quickly to arrange a national monument to the hero of Kalunga. A memorial to Gillespie was proposed by Lord Castlereagh, the Tory Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 21st June 1815. Executed by Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841), it was installed in the South Transept, Centre Aisle of St Paul’s in 1826.

Eschewing classical allegory, Chantrey depicted Gillespie in a Major-General’s uniform, with a highly decorated, embroidered jacket and a medal pinned to his chest. A heavy cloak, held on his shoulders with tassels and a thick cord, falls to his feet. A fringed sash sits around his waist. In one hand he holds a scroll, which, like the scroll at his feet, presumably represents military orders and plans.

 
1835: Bishop Reginald Heber (1784-1826)

After being consecrated as Bishop of Calcutta, Reginald Heber arrived in India in October 1823.

Alan Tritton, erstwhile Â鶹´«Ã½President, quotes Heber’s impressions of Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens: ‘It is not only a curious but picturesque and most beautiful scene and more perfectly answers Milton’s idea of Paradise than anything I ever saw’.

Heber triggered two centuries of historian headache during his 1824 visit to Dacca, where (per the Â鶹´«Ã½post of 25/3/25), he consecrated the Narinda burial ground, and noted in his diary that ‘the old Durwan’ called the large monument the tomb of ‘Colombo Sahib’.

Following her chance discovery of Archdeacon Firminger’s 1917 epitaph transcriptions in Bengal Past and Present, Â鶹´«Ã½historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones concluded that Heber’s note was based on an aural distortion of ‘[Nicholas] Clerembault, Esq.’ the London-based Huguenot family member who had become ‘Chief of Ye English Factory at Dacca’, and died in 1775.

Heber died, aged 42, in 1826, and was buried at St John’s Church in Trichinopoly. A collection of his hymns, including ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand…’ and ‘Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty’, was published shortly afterwards.

Heber’s memorial was, like Gillespie’s, executed by Francis Leggatt Chantrey. Completed in 1835, it was installed in the Crypt of St Paul’s (Chapel of St Faith, South Aisle).

A note on the sculptor:
Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841): Famously self-taught – he had ‘never had an hour’s instruction from any sculptor in my life’ – Chantrey displayed ‘a great gift for characterisation’; his ‘ability to render the softness of flesh’ was much admired. (Per the Â鶹´«Ã½post of 11/5/25), his 1820 sculpture of Dr James Anderson at St George’s Cathedral, Madras, was called a ‘wonderfully lifelike and natural’ work).

Ironically, as Â鶹´«Ã½member Stephen McClarence points out, ‘Despite all the wonderful memorials he sculpted, Chantrey’s own [at Norton, near Sheffield] is a plain unornamented slab’.

1862: Henry Montgomery Lawrence (1806-1857)

The Chief Commissioner of Oudh, Henry Lawrence died on 4 July 1857 from wounds received during the attack on the Residency at Lucknow. He was buried in the Residency grounds.

A memorial to Lawrence, funded by the SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) and the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), was executed by John Graham Lough (1798-1876), and installed on the west wall of the East Aisle of the North Transept of St Paul’s in 1862.

The statue, in white marble, shows Lawrence with one hand holding an unfurling scroll; the other a leather-bound volume, resting on a second book. Beside him is a sword with a curved Indian, talwar–style Sikh blade – possibly modelled on the sword presented to him in 1842 by the Maharajah of Lahore.

In a reference to Lawrence’s ‘Military Asylum’ at Sanawar – a hill station boarding school for protecting the children of British soldiers from ‘the debilitating effects of the tropical climate, and the demoralizing influence of Barrack-life’ – a relief below the plinth portrays him seated on a low chair, welcoming a group of three children with a matronly woman.

By omitting Lawrence’s medals (eg his KCB) from the sculpture, and any mention of his military rank (Brigadier-General) from the inscription, Lough’s memorial focuses attention on Lawrence as a philanthropic ‘man of action’, in keeping with his chosen epitaph ‘Here lies Henry Lawrence who tried to do his duty’.

For details on the many other memorials with Indian connections at St Paul’s, please click on the , created with Stepney Community Trust, and , an academic research project hosted at the University of York’s Department of the History of Art.

Information about the Cathedral’s opening hours, times of services, range of tours and other events is available on their website

(Suggestions for Â鶹´«Ã½website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’.)

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Â鶹´«Ã½Newsletter readers, family and friends may be interested in the following events:

Date / Time	Event	Place
On now (until Monday 4 May 2026)	‘Women of Influence: The Pattle Sisters’ An exhibition about the lives and work of the seven Anglo-Indian sisters whose influence in art, literature, photography and society ‘extended from Calcutta to Kensington, and from the salons of Little Holland House to the Bloomsbury Group’.	Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Guildford GU3 1DQ Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 21 June 2026)	‘Painters, Ports and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850’ Exhibition featuring ‘over 100 objects from Asia’, including ‘rich opaque watercolours, large-scale oil portraits, evocative architectural drafts’and a ‘spectacular’ 37′ long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow.	Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 1 Nov 2026)	‘Journeys through cloth’ Exhibition of textiles from Karun Thakar’s collection ‘centring on Punjabi baghs and phulkari, traditionally embroidered by young girls and women’ at this National Trust property.	Osterley Park, Jersey Road, London TW7 4RD Click for further details.
On now (until Sunday 8 Nov 2026)	‘The last Princesses of Punjab’ Exhibition about the ‘Punjabi princess and suffragette icon’ Sophia Duleep Singh, and ‘the women who shaped her’	Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, London W8 4PX. Click for further details, including registration.
On now (until Sunday 13 Dec 2026)	‘Colonial Views of India’ The ‘first exhibition focusing on photographs and negatives in the Ashmolean’, featuring ‘previously unseen photographs of India by Colonel Eugene Clutterbuck Impey (1830-1904)’	Ashmolean Museum (Gallery 29), Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH. Click for further details.
Wednesday 13 May 2026 – Friday 15 May 2026	‘The Indentured Labour Route at the Crossroads: Imagining New Futures for the Global Diaspora’ A 3-day conference in Mauritius on ‘Indenture, Migration, Memory, Identity and the Future of the Global Diaspora’	University of Mauritius, Reduit Click for further details, including registration.
Tuesday 26 May 2026, 11:30-13:00	‘Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia’ A joint BIHT and Indian Civil Service Society lecture by Sam Dalrymple, followed by (optional) lunch	University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, Mayfair, London W1K 1DB. Click for further details, including registration.
From Monday 1 Jun 2026, 10:30-15:00	‘The Visakhapatnam Cabinet’ Made from padauk wood in the port city of Visakhapatnam c.1760, this ivory-inlaid cabinet (‘the largest and most ornate piece of furniture of its kind in the National Trust’s collection’) returns to display at Kingston Lacy after conservation work at the Royal Oak Foundation Conservation Studio at Knole, Kent.	Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minster, Dorset. Click for further details (and directions, eg ‘satnav unreliable; follow B3082 and brown signs’).
From Monday 8 Jun 2026 – Monday 13 Jul 2026	‘The relentless rise of the East India Company’ Lecture tour by the historian William Dalrymple, covering ‘more than two hundred years of tumultuous colonial history, covert political machinations, and bloody resistance’	Lectures will be held at venues in: Birmingham, Chester, Tunbridge Wells, Guildford, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Malvern. Click for further details (and to purchase tickets).
Sunday 14 Jun 2026, 2pm-3pm	‘Indian Forces Chattri Memorial Service’ Memorial Service in remembrance of ‘the Indian and Nepalese soldiers from Undivided/Prepartitioned India who were cremated in Brighton during the First World War’	Indian Forces Chattri Memorial, Patcham Down, Standean Lane, Brighton BN1 8ZB. Refreshments afterwards at Hove Albion Football Club, American Express Stadium, Village Way, BN1 9BL. Click for further details.
Saturday 27 Jun 2026, 10:00am-15:00pm	‘FIBIS Open Meeting and AGM’ FIBIS (Families in British India Society) Open Day and AGM. Lectures include ‘Curzon’s Chosen Men’ (Alan Dillon); ‘Mutiny 1857 – the Indian Perspective’ (Rosie Llewellyn-Jones) and ‘With Ox Carts & Dooli Bearers – Medals of India to 1947’ (Nathan Smith)	Union Jack Club, Sandell Street, London SE1 8UJ. Click for further details, including registration.
From Wednesday 1 Jul 2026 – Friday 31 Jul 2026	‘South Asian Heritage Month 2026’ Launched at Cardiff University’s Bute Building on 26 April 2026, this year’s SAHM theme is ‘#UnityInDiversity’. ‘Our histories are different. Our experiences are varied. But the values that run through us, family, resilience, hospitality, belonging, connect us all. This July, we celebrate exactly that’.	Use ‘#UnityInDiversity’ ‘#SouthAsianHeritageMonth’ and ‘#SAHM2026’ on social media to sign up to the SAHM Newsletter, find out how to get involved, and learn about planned SAHM events.
From Tuesday 8 Sep 2026 – Sunday 7 Mar 2027	‘A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire’ An exhibition of ‘treasures from the vibrant world of song, poetry and performance of Mughal South Asia from around 1750 to 1850’ .	Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB. Click for further details.
From Saturday 19 Sep 2026 – Sunday 31 Jan 2027	‘Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now’ This major survey exhibition will reveal Sunil Gupta’s (b. 1953, New Delhi) ‘pioneering contribution to photography over five decades… in Delhi, Montreal, New York and London’.	Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 0AQ. Click for further details.

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