Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXXIII No. 7, July 16-31, 2023
Heritage Watch: Shifting the Heritage of Over 300 Years
Like it or hate it, you cannot deny that the Hynmer Obelisk, better known as the Yale Monument, has been a part of our city’s heritage for over three centuries. It, and the neighbouring Powney Vault, which vanished mysteriously around the time the Metrorail began work in the vicinity, were the only remnants of what was once the Golgotha or place of skulls for Madras. Referred to rather euphemistically as the Guava Garden, it was where the British buried their dead at least till the 1750s. For more details on the same, please see Madras Musings Vol. 25, No 13, Oct 16-31, 2015.
The High Court of Madras has now ordered the shifting of the Hynmer Obelisk and the Archaeological Survey of India is faced with the challenge of getting this massive piece of masonry to move. Hopefully it will find a new home, and the precincts of the Government Museum suggest a ready space. Our OLD is the obelisk as it appears in Hiram Bingham’s Elihu Yale, the American Nabob of Queen’s Square, published in 1939. Our NEW, taken around a decade ago, was when a distant view was impossible, hemmed in as the structure is by construction. Maybe shifting it is not such a bad option.
