Visakhapatnam March 7

On Wednesday March 7 we left Bhimunipatnam and went to Visakhapatnam.

Early in the morning I wrote a short article about our project for the Ameya School Newsletter.

Survey of Heritage Buildings in Bhimunipatnam

Robert Schick

American Center of Oriental Research

Amman, Jordan

schickrobert@hotmail.com

The Dutch East India Company established a settlement in the town of Bhimunipatnam in the 17th century. A number of buildings that the Dutch, and later the British, constructed remain in Bhimunipatnam, providing the town with a special architectural legacy. But no complete inventory of interesting historic buildings in Bhimunipatnam had been compiled and in recent years many of the old Dutch and British heritage buildings have been demolished.

So faced with the rapid loss of an imperfectly known architectural heritage, Robert Schick, an American archaeologist and historian, Anja Heidenreich, an archaeologist from Bamberg, Germany, and Ilse Sturkenboom, an art historian at the University of Bamberg, Germany, spent two weeks between 22 February and 6 March 2013 compiling an inventory of the heritage sites in Bhimunipatnam and photographing and drawing architectural plans of some of the more significant buildings. The project received a survey permit from the Andhra Pradesh State Department of Archaeology and Museums, Hyderabad.

During their two-week project in Bhimunipatnam, they stayed at the Ameya World School. They gave presentations to the school students about their work and had plenty of opportunity to meet the students at meal times. They also led some of the students on a field trip to the town to see some of the heritage buildings.

As soon as the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, the Dutch established a string of trading posts along the east coast of India, including their settlement at Bhimunipatnam in 1651, at the time a fishing village where the Gosthani River flows into the Bay of Bengal, and the Dutch constructed a fort there in 1661. In 1754 the Marathas attacked the settlement, but it was soon rebuilt and the later part of the 18th century the town changed hands during the course of the Anglo-Dutch wars, finally passing from Dutch to British hands in 1825. The town was established as a municipality in 1861. In the 20th century Bhimunipatnam declined in importance as Visakhapatnam grew, once a deep-water harbor was dredged there in 1933.

The surviving heritage sites in Bhimunipatnam had attracted some attention by previous investigators, but the task of Robert Schick, Anja Heidenreich and Ilse Sturkenboom was to compile a complete inventory of the dozens of interesting old buildings and other sites in and around the town. The heritage sites include the state-notified Flagstaff and Dutch cemeteries and the early Buddhist site on the hill of Pavuralakonda. Some of the heritage sites are public buildings, while others are commercial buildings or private houses.

Some of the old buildings continue in use, such as the Canadian Baptist Mission Church (now Andhra Baptist Church) and St Peter’s Church, the Canadian Baptist Mission School, the Narasimhaswami Temple, the Shayalayam Temple complex, the Clock Tower, the Light House and the Municipal Choultry as well as many private houses scattered along the streets of the town.

But many other interesting old buildings are abandoned or derelict, such as the Port Office, the head office and godowns of the Ripley Company, the Dutch bungalow at Pavuralakonda, the Light-House keeper’s quarters, as well as many other private buildings and houses. Also a large portion of the known heritage buildings have been demolished in the last few decades, including buildings known as the 116 Doors Bungalow, the BNC Jute Bailing Company, the Moses Mansion, the Gali Meda, the Governor’s Bungalow, the Old Court House and the Rippon Poor House.

The two-week project served as a catalyst to get people together who are interested in the heritage of Bhimunipatnam to see how the heritage sites of the town can be better protected and promoted for tourism.

After breakfast we packed and hung out until our taxi came at 10:00. In the meantime we observed the daily assembly at the school at 9:00 and Ilse joined a gym class.

Morning assembly at the school

The gym class

We arrived at Rani’s house at 11:00 and we chatted with her and her husband and sister and had lunch. Also Raju, the toy manufacturer whom we had met last year, came by. We all took advantage of Rani’s wireless internet to get caught up with email. I also scanned the various newspaper articles about us, as well as some old photographs of the excavations in 1953 at the site of Rakasimetta, near Peda Uppalam where we had been last year.

Anja and Ilse at Rani’s house

The workmen in 1953

At 5:15 the taxi came to take me to the train station and Anja and Ilse to the airport for their flight to a beach resort in Kerala, where they planned to spend a week before returning to Germany. I went to the train station in order to try to change a train ticket for my travels in a few days, but there was such a long line that after spending an hour, with an estimated three hours still to go before my number would come up, I gave up. At sunset I started to walk back to my hotel, but along the way I made a wrong turn and got hopelessly lost, so I ended up taking an auto back. I had successfully walked the distance during the daytime last year.