The History and Prominence of South Park street Cemetery

The Park Street Cemetery was one of the earliest non-church cemeteries in the world, and probably the largest Christian cemetery outside Europe and  America in the 19th century. Opened in 1767 on what was previously a marshy area, the cemetery was in use until about 1830 and is now a heritage site, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The cemetery was opened to relieve the pressure on the old burial ground in the heart of the city. The road leading to the cemetery came to be known as the Burying Ground Road but was subsequently renamed Park Street after the park around Vansittart's garden house. By the year 1785 the burial ground had been extended on the northern side of Park Street and by 1840 a vast new cemetery was opened to the east of the Lower Circular Road. The Europeans started to disuse it in the year 1790. It has been confirmed by a marble plaque at the gate which reads "South Park Street, Opened: 1767, Closed: 1790".

South Park Street Cemetery is not a burial ground, it’s also a cultural pot boiler of Bengal where Henry Vivian Louis Derozio lies along with the eccentric Major General Charles Stuart and a spinning wheel of stories that revolve around the Raj

It was in 1767 that this cemetery, then located well past the city limits was established. Known simply as the ‘Burial Ground’, it had lent its dismal name to the road that led to it. Much later, Sir Elijah Impey, the then Chief Justice of Bengal, nurtured a deer park in the vicinity of this cemetery and renamed the road as what we today know as Park Street.

South Park Street Cemetery  is  indeed  a very old and colonial cemetery. An oasis of calm in the heart of Kolkata, the place is mostly tranquil and quiet, but for the occasional squeaks of a squirrel or the crowing of crows sitting on the tall and mossy gravestones .

As you enter the cemetery, a large porch, has plaques embedded in its walls, which gives a glimpse of the dates and ages of its inhabitants. One of which is sacred to the memory of Samuel Oldham, the first British undertaker in Bengal, who acquired his tombstone (stone being rare in this alluvial region) from the ruins of the city of Gaur, north of the Ganga near English Bazaar.  Mr. Oldham amassed a fortune before he himself was laid, in 1788, in the South Park Street Cemetery, surrounded by numerous of his own handicraft.

A walk down the main concrete pathway reveals a vast, imperial necropolis – almost an open-air museum of a large number of neo-classical, funerary sculptures. The various pyramids, mausoleums and tomb statues, within this place bear testimony to the masonry work of those times. This place is indeed of great interest to anyone who pursues Calcutta

– old and new.

The cemetery contains the tomb of Colonel Vansittart, whose wife was a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Other graves of note are those of Lt. Col. Robert Kyd, the distinguished botanist and founder of the East India Company’s Botanical Gardens, Lt. Col. James Lillyman, who supervised the building of Fort William, sons of Captain Cook and Charles Dickens and many others, such as Charles Short and Sir John Royds, after whom streets in Calcutta were named and John Garstin, the controversial architect of the Town Hall.

A few feet away from Stuart’s tomb, lays a stalwart of the early history of Bengal — Henry Vivian Louis Derozio. He was the youthful, Anglo-Indian poet, rational thinker and inspiration, behind the extraordinary, Young Bengal Movement, of the early 19th century. He was influenced by the ideas thrown up by the French Revolution and as a 21-year-old teacher, sought to transmit these, to his pupils at Hindu College (subsequently renamed Presidency College). His unconventional teaching methods resulted in his being accused of promoting atheism to his radical students and led to his dismissal from the College. He died soon after, still a very young man, at the age of 22, but he left a rich heritage of poetry, that inspired future generations and left a permanent impact, on the social outlook of the Bengali- Hindu community.

The people buried here include prominent Britons of two centuries ago: sea captains, high government officials, leaders of the British East India Company, and men honoured by knighthood.

The tombs are in the structure of Ghotics and rich style of Indo – Saracenic style.

South Park Street Cemetery is located on Mother Teresa Saran, Kolkata, India. The road used to be called Park Street, and prior to that Burial Ground Road.

Anindo Das Gupta

PGPMC

2nd sem