Fort Saint George and St. Mary's Church
We went touristing on Saturday - we'd been using weekends for sports, shopping, and sleeping recently and thought we should learn something this weekend. Fort Saint George is where the British in Chennai/Madras got started. In the mid 1600s, the British decided they needed an outpost on the east coast for trade and security reasons (the French were established further south). They purchased some land and built a fort. Their influence expanded from there. The fort still stands (mostly) three hundred years later, and is still a seat of the state government. For being a top tourist attraction, it's well hidden. We had to ask directions, and finally found it behind a security barrier.
The Fort Museum was interesting, and as many buildings here, a bit dilapidated. Inside were textiles (soldiers' uniforms), china, Daneills prints, grand oil portraits, and coins. Most not photographable.
Saint Mary's Church is the oldest British building in India (source and lots of details here). We'd heard about the bomb-proof roof, and we saw some of the cannon ball bombs in the museum above. We also saw a petard (high school Shakespeare vocab. alert!), which you can see here (on right, "A 19-c British army petard).
As customary, the church is surrounded by ancient graves.
And a garden out back.
We went touristing on Saturday - we'd been using weekends for sports, shopping, and sleeping recently and thought we should learn something this weekend. Fort Saint George is where the British in Chennai/Madras got started. In the mid 1600s, the British decided they needed an outpost on the east coast for trade and security reasons (the French were established further south). They purchased some land and built a fort. Their influence expanded from there. The fort still stands (mostly) three hundred years later, and is still a seat of the state government. For being a top tourist attraction, it's well hidden. We had to ask directions, and finally found it behind a security barrier.
The Fort Museum was interesting, and as many buildings here, a bit dilapidated. Inside were textiles (soldiers' uniforms), china, Daneills prints, grand oil portraits, and coins. Most not photographable.
Saint Mary's Church is the oldest British building in India (source and lots of details here). We'd heard about the bomb-proof roof, and we saw some of the cannon ball bombs in the museum above. We also saw a petard (high school Shakespeare vocab. alert!), which you can see here (on right, "A 19-c British army petard).
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