Heritage Watch: The Old Round Plaques in the City

The Lead 1 story (Can heritage be commemorated with plaques instead of renaming roads?) set us off on a search of what were the commemorative plaques that we do have in our city. There are very many, all in the need of some maintenance but what is a wonder is that most have survived. The practice from what we could see, began with just two plaques – one being placed at Chepauk Palace and the other on the wall of the Great House on Charles Street inside Fort St. George. The two are of identical designand were put up in colonial times. That these became accepted as standards is evident when you find similar plaques in places as far as Trichy and Penukonda. It is a matter of conjecture as to why this very aesthetic design was not adopted for later plaques or why more places were not commemorated in similar fashion. Our picture, courtesy Madras the Gracious City, by S. Muthiah, shows a section of Great House with the plaque visible at the extreme left. The text on it is reproduced from Col D.M. Reid’s Story of Fort George.

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