St. Andrew's Church, Dalhousie Square

St. Andrews Church, located at the North Eastern corner of Dalhousie Square, has two other names; The Scotch Kirk and Lat Sahib Ka Girja. The second name it probably acquired from the fact that the foundation stone was laid by the Countess of Loudon and Moira, wife of the then Governor General, The Marquess of Hastings. The former nickname stemmed from that fact that it was built to serve the Scottish Presbyterian community of Calcutta (Kolkata).

St. Andrew's Church. The tram seen here is entering the B.B.D. Bag Depot

The place where St. Andrews Church now stands was once occupied by the Old Court House. It may have originally been a charity school, which then became the Mayor’s Court, and finally the Supreme Court, before the magnificent Gothic pile on Esplanade Row West came up. The road leading from the Church to the Maidan is still known as Old Court House Street. This was the same court house where Maharaja Nandakumar was tried and sentenced to death in 1775. The Old Court House eventually fell into disrepair, and was pulled down in 1792. The Anglo-Indian Presbytery was created by the Charter of 1813 along with the Anglo India Episcopate. The Court of Directors in a public general letter dated 12th November 1813 informed the Governor General of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal of the appointment of “one Minister of the Church of Scotland with the same Salary as is granted to the Junior Chaplain at each of the Presidencies, and we direct that a suitable place of Worship be provided or erected”. The Rev. Dr. James Bryce arrived in Calcutta on 28th November 1814 to fill the position of Chaplain on the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment. It seems that right from the beginning a bitter rivalry existed between Rev. Bryce, and the first Bishop of the Indian Episcopate, Bishop Fanshawe Middleton, who headed the Anglican St. John’s Church located at the North Eastern corner of Government House (Raj Bhavan).

Portuguese Church, Brabourne Road

Calcutta’s (Kolkata) Portuguese Church, formally known as The Cathedral of the Most Holy Rosary, has existed in various forms since 1690, but has always experienced some friction with the British. Many Portuguese migrants to India took native wives, and their offspring came to be known as Kintal. Many of these Kintals moved to Calcutta in search of fortune, and the East India Company allowed them to settle in specific areas near the river. Since the Kintals were the only people in India then breeding and selling fowl, the area they settled in is known as “Moorgeeghata” or “the fowl market” even today. Job Charnock had originally granted 10 bighas of land to the Roman Catholics of the Augustinian order to set up a mass hall in the area. But when in 1693 Sir John Goldsborough of the East India Company found the company’s Protestant factors were converting to Roman Catholicism in the mass hall and taking native wives, he ordered them out. The friars would return on his death only 6 months later, and this time they erected a brick Church, a little further away from the original mass hall, and this is where the Portuguese Church or The Cathedral of the Most Holy Rosary stands today.

The Portuguese Church

St. Stephen's Church, Diamond Harbour Road

We call it “the rocket Church”. I mean come one! How can you not? Take a good look. That unique looking steeple, that looks like the body of a rocket, complete with nose cone, and on both sides of the entrance, you see the way the walls are sloping? That looks like tail fins, right? The books say that the Church is typically Gothic in architecture, and that steeple, while unique, was never meant to look like a rocket. It was meant to look like a ship’s lantern from the old days. The reason why a Church with a steeple like a ship’s lantern is located on Diamond Harbour Road is simple enough to understand. The Kidderpore docks are nearby, and therefore, this area would have been filled with seafaring people. This would have been the first Church anyone would see when travelling East towards the city after disembarking from a ship. Located on 3, Diamond Harbour Road, St. Stephen’s Church is right next to the St. Thomas Boys’ School, but must be entered through the somewhat chaotic lanes of the Kidderpore Bazaar.

Hastings Chapel, Clyde Road

Me and my friend Amartya were on one of our Sunday morning rounds of the city when we stumbled upon Hastings Chapel. We do this almost every Sunday, walking the streets of Calcutta, with our cameras, photographing heritage buildings, and often discovering things that we never knew about. This was one of those things.

St. John’s Church

Entrance to Church

At the North-Western corner of Government House (Raj Bhavan) may be found Kolkata’s oldest surviving Anglican Church, St. John’s Church. The oldest Anglican Church of Calcutta was St. Anne’s, which was located roughly where the principal rotunda of the Writers’ Building stands today. This was completely destroyed in the Seige of Calcutta, in 1756. St. John’s was built 1787, and with the advent of Bishop Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, became the principal Anglican Cathedral of Calcutta. It remained so till the consecration of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1847. The land on which St. John's is built was originally a burial ground, known as the "old burial ground", in use ever since Charnock's party set up base in Calcutta. The old burial ground had been closed since 1767. The land was the property of Maharaja Nabo Krishna Deb, founder of the Shovabazaar Raj family. It was "presented" by him to Warren Hastings, in 1783. All the graves were dug up and the remains removed. The only graves to have been left undisturbed were those of Job Charnock and Admiral Watson. Some of the gravestones were laid around Charnock’s mausoleum.  More than Rs. 70,000.00 was raised for the Church’s construction through donations and lottery. The Church was designed by Lieutenant Agg of the Bengal Engineers, on the lines of St. Martin in Fields in London, but with design modifications to accommodate for the soft ground. Sandstone from Chunar was used for the steeple, while blue marble from the ruins of Gaur was used for the flooring. The use of stone is what gave St. John’s it’s native nickname, “Pathure Girja” or Stone Church.  The Church was consecrated on the 24^th of June, 1787, the date being that of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. The church was used for baptisms and weddings of the who’s who of Bengal’s British folk at one time. In 1798, merchant and Calcutta Sheriff William Fairlie, from whom Fairlie Place got its name, married Miss Margaret Ogilvie here.