Machilipatnam March 10

I had traveled to Machilipatnam at the invitation of Mohammed Silar, the head of the local chapter of INTACH, to see the heritage sites at this historic port on the east coast. Machilipatnam was the port for the city of Hyderabad and the Dutch and later the British established settlements there.

I arrived at 8:30 and Mohammed Silar met me and took me to the Home of Hope Orphanage where I settled in and had breakfast. At 10:15 we went to the nearby historic Dutch cemetery, where we were met by two others and some journalists. Remarkably, modern signs identify the texts of several of the tombstones.

Mohammed Silar and his friends with me at the Dutch cemetery

We then proceeded to the Dutch and British cantonment and fort at Bandar, which is an historic monument protected by the central government on the outskirts of the modern town. The site consists of a fort around a central courtyard, along with an isolated belfry for a no longer extant Church of St John the Evangelist that was destroyed in the cyclone of 1864, and at a distance an armory building.

The sign at the fort

The fort

Another view of the fort

The belfry and armory seen from the fort

The armory

Adjacent to the fort is a hospital built by the Nizam of Hyderabad and a jaggery (sugar cane) factory from the 1920s, now both in ruinous condition.

The Nizam’s hospital to the right and the jaggery factory to the left as seen from the fort

Vats in the jaggery factory

The overgrown perimeter wall of the jaggery factory

We then went to see the historic British cemetery nearby. Among those buried there is Michael Topping, the first modern professional surveyor in India who died in 1796. The inscription on his tomb is in Latin.

The historic British cemetery

The tomb of Michael Topping

We then went to the northeast of the town to see a Portuguese tomb marked by a pillar that Mohammed had discovered a month earlier. That is one of the few surviving traces of the earliest European settlement in the area.

The Portuguese tomb

Back at the Home of Hope at 2:30, I had lunch and read some articles that Mohammed had given me about the town. At 4:30 we went on an afternoon visit of historic places in Machilipatnam.; Moses, the director of the Home of Hope, joined us. We first went to a Dutch building and then to the government complex, where there are number of buildings from British times.

The Dutch building

The Governor’s building

We then went to the St Mary’s Church, with a cemetery from British times and still in use. Inside the church is a funerary monument for Arabelle Robison, who died in 1809 and therein hangs a tale. Arabelle was the daughter of Captain Robinson stationed at the Machilipatnam fort. She and Major General John Pater, the commander of the fort, fell in love, but they could not marry because he was said to already have a wife back in England. But hey moved in together anyway, causing a great scandal. Before the matter of his previous marriage could be cleared up, Arabelle died. She was refused burial in consecrated ground, so John Pater had her buried in a private ground. He had her body embalmed and put in a coffin that he could raise to the surface by pulling a knob to better contemplate his loss.

St Mary’s Church and the cemetery with Moses

The funerary monument for Arabelle Robinson with me, the local pastor, Mohammed and Moses

Back at the Home of Hope at 7:00, I was able to use the internet on the director’s computer, before attending the evening gathering of the orphans, at which I said a few words, followed by dinner with Moses, the director. The Home of Hope orphanage has been in operation since 1995 with the support over the years of two women from Finland.

The evening with the orphans at the Home of Hope Orphanage