Notes on the Geography of Peninsular India: Chennai/Madras 4: The Old English Burial Ground

The cemetery for early Madras is about 3/4 of a mile west of St. Mary's Church and stands at the end of Burial Ground Road, at the junction with Pallava Salai.

Make default image size larger

The entrance, almost identical with the entrances of the city's other Christian cemeteries.

The grounds are badly overgrown, and most of the tomb inscriptions are no longer legible.

That's true for the biggest of them as well as the smallest.

Watch out for snakes and mongooses.

Here's one that's legible if we can get closer.

Col. Peter Whannel survived until 1854, 18 years after the death of his daughter. He himself died at 76.

Two of six children survive to adulthood.

Dead at 21.

Caroline Patterson, "who departed this life on the 16th December 1809. In the prime of her life [she] fell victim to a cruel lingering complaint. Uncommon patience supported her throughout. She was innocence itself, a good Christian, [and] affectionate daughter...."

More children.

A man, his wife, and his four children are drowned at sea. Julian Cotton's List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras,, 1905, has this note (p. 43): "Mr. Hope was a merchant and shopkeeper at Madras and few men have ever left India with a fairer character or a larger fortune: few men, even in more elevated situations, did half the good that this honest man did, since he was as liberal and kind-hearted as he was modest and unassuming. He was a passenger in the fleet with General MacDowall in 1809, when he perished in the gale which destroyed nearly a whole squadron off the Cape."

In the back of the cemetery there's a Commonwealth War Graves section, kept in the customary, meticulous repair.

The regular cemetery has plenty of military burials, too. Here: Colonel MacKenzie, commanding the forces at Wallajabad Station, dead at 46. Walajabad, as the name is spelled today, is a town not far to the west, in the Kanchipuram District.

Dead at 21 from a snake bite.

On the other side of the cemetery, life goes on in brilliant color.