Tracing the history of European-built shrines in George Town -Church chronicles

RING IN THE PAST Anderson's Church Photo: R. Ravindran

ESTHER ELIAS traces the history of European-built shrines in George Town

In the numerous churches of George Town lies the story of Madras’ tryst with many nations and a journey down five centuries.

Just across the High Court, extends the slender steeple of the 155-year-old Anderson’s church, named in memory of Madras’ first Church of Scotland missionary, Rev. John Anderson. In the oil portrait of Anderson, the handful of white-marble plaques that detail church history and the two silver communion chalices gifted in 1844, unfold the story of a man who first believed in education, and then faith. Anderson is today remembered as the founder of a school on the Esplanade in a former sailor’s house that grew to become Madras Christian College’s first home. While Anderson lies buried with his wife Margaret in graves at Thana Street, Purasaiwalkam, Rev. Jacqulin Jothi says his warm spirit lives on in the church that’s a haven of quiet for street children, beggars and weekday worshippers.

RING IN THE PAST Broadway Tamil Wesley Church Photo: R. Ravindran

Wander further north-west through George Town, and follow your nose for scents of pulses, spices and coffee along Thatha Muthiappan Street, and you’ll stumble on a cluster of churches, all nearing or beyond their bi-centenaries. Tucker Church, founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1820, and named after its second missionary and minister Rev. John Tucker, was built on land bought from a ‘Mussalman’. Its wooden shutter-windows have long given way to local stained-glass but its 150-year-old, London-made pipe organ still rings loud at Tamil service every Sunday, observes Henry Thomas, whose wife is a sixth-generation member of the church. For the most part, Tucker’s looks just as it did in the detailed pencil drawings that Sarah, John’s sister, drew in the 1840s in letters to her ‘young friend’ Lisa, now collected in the slim volume South Indian Sketches.

RING IN THE PASTSt. Mary's Co-cathedral Photo: R. Ravindran

The church just across the road hasn’t been as lucky though. Last year, the brick-red, 153-year-old Broadway Tamil Wesley Church, grew cracks in its floor and filled with water from underground Metro Rail tunnelling.

Its predecessor right opposite, the Black Town or Broadway Popham Church, experienced something similar nearly two centuries ago. Inaugurated on April 25, 1822, by Wesleyan missionary James Lynch, the church succumbed to cracks in 1844, and the building that stands today is its re-opened avatar.

Time has stilled, though, in the 207-year-old William Charles church tucked away behind the bustle on Davidson Street. Its wooden rafters, low-sloped roof and outward stone structure remain. Beside the altar are chairs that Rev. John Selvaraj says belonged to Tamil scholar and linguist, Bishop Robert Caldwell, who served at William Charles in the 1850s. The furniture now cushions some hefty cats.

Our story slips into the 18th Century with the CSI St. Mark’s church, completed in 1800, which bookends George Town at its north-eastern end on Pedariyar Koil Street. The grave of its first reverend Richard Hall Kerr graces the floor before the altar and a plaque was erected at his death at 40 in 1808. Graves abound within and without the St. Mary’s Co-Cathedral that rises beside the closed door of the 1712 Armenian Church. St Mary’s, first built in 1658, and rebuilt in 1775, springs to life every Tuesday as rows of the sick, aged and dying from various faiths wait for alms and miracles at the feet of the St. Antony’s statue. Among graves of dead priests, prominent men and women of the community and numerous Irish nuns, are the remains of the Armenian Moorat family with memorial plaques and sculptures, that helped build the Cathedral, points out Fr. Bellarmine Fernando SDB. Samuel McCartish Moorat, his wife Anna Raphael and son Edward, known for squandering his father’s fortunes, lie enclosed in the Cathedral’s confession room, their cracked tombstones still bearing the sculptor’s name, P. Turnerelli.

RING IN THE PAST William Charles Church Photo: R. Ravindran

Far from the celebrated areas of George Town, close to where it segues into the street-maze of Broadway, stands a lone church behind garbage dumps that has its origins in 1640. The Catholic church, ‘Our Lady of Assumption’, has its roots in a church built within Fort St. George by Fr. Andrew of the Capuchins in 1640. The story goes that over a century later, after the French invasion of the Fort, the Portuguese and their church were evicted by the British for supposedly plotting with the French. In 1749, the church was rebuilt in the Portuguese neighbourhood on today’s Portuguese Church Street, with a tablet at its roof that read 1640. The Tamils around though, remember it as ‘Mathura Nayagi’, a moniker for Mary, says Fr. John Andrew. It stood its ground until 1993, when it was razed to be replaced with the present swanky structure. As Chennai turns 375 this week, this little church celebrates it 375th birthday too.

H 19 Aug 2014