The South Park Street Cemetery , Kolkata

A teeming metropolis, home to at least 15 million inhabitants, the West Bengal capital city of Kolkata has achieved equal measures of fame and notoriety since its founding in 1690 with the arrival of the East India Company.

Calcutta thrived during the time of the British Raj in India, serving as its capital city until it was moved to Delhi in 1912. The visitor to modern-day Kolkata is still able to experience the imperial splendour of the architecture of the Raj era, specifically through the magnificent Victoria Monument and the Law Courts complex.

Even if Kolkata has seen better days, and its decline is due to circumstances well beyond its control, it still remains the centre of Indian intellectual life and retains a vibrancy and colour which is both unique and breathtaking.

A stroll down Park Street, the fashionable centre of Kolkata’s commercial district, is rewarded at the junction with Lower Circular Road.

Opened in 1767, this old cemetery replaced the yard at St John’s Church in the ruins of the Old Fort, in which Job Charnock, the reputed founder of Calcutta, is buried.

Despite its location at the teeming heart of the city centre, the cemetery was originally some distance from the settlement centred on Dalhousie Square, between Mission Row and the Hooghly River.The burial ground was then amongst marshy fields and areas of jungle, along what was known as Burial Ground Road. Later it was renamed Park Street after the private deer park built by Sir Elijah Impey.The whole area was nothing more than a bamboo forest and it has been reported that Warren Hastings,the first Governor General of India, hunted tiger there towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Stepping out of Park Street and into the cemetery today is indeed like stepping out of the twenty first century and back in time. Beneath its shady avenues of cupolas, obelisks, pyramids and classical mausolea are buried the men and women who built Calcutta up from a simple trading establishment. Their stories lend historical significance to the existence of the cemetery and complement the visual and atmospheric power of the grounds.

A stroll through this restored treasure house of Raj social history reveals much about life in Calcutta two hundred years ago.

One of the most interesting and picturesque monuments is that of Major-General Charles Stuart-familiarly known as ‘ Hindu Stuart’. Stuart earned the title because of his love of India.He lived there for 50 years, becoming a Hindu and regularly walked from his home to bathe in the River Hooghly.When Stuart went to England on leave he took with him many images of Hindu gods and performed religious rites there.His tomb was surmounted by an elaborate edifice with stone carvings of deities and in 1907 the Calcutta Historical Society reported that it was in considerable disarray.Today the tomb has been reasonably well restored.

As a seventeen year old she used to walk with the poet Landor on the mountains and sea shores of Wales.Rose was sent to Calcutta to join her aunt Lady Russell but within a year she had died of cholers and Landor was heart-broken.Memories of Rose Aylmer featured prominently in his poetry snd his famous ode to Rose Aylmer was added to her tomb in 1910.

Is the most important of its kind in the East, a repository of fascinating social history.Together,the tombstones reveal much that would not be obvious from the individual biographies of those who are buried there.

The South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta , published by the Association for the Preservation of Historical Cemeteries in India

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