Kolkata ('Calcutta)' s Colonial Cemeteries : solemn testaments to the city’s imperial legacy

Navrang India July 20, 2025
South Park Cemetery, Kolkata, WB yasktourism.com

                                             "Full many a gem of purest ray serene
                                              The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
                                               Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
                                               And waste its sweetness on the desert air"
                                                                                               ......... Thomas Gray

The cemeteries of colonial Calcutta stand as solemn testaments to the city’s imperial legacy, offering a deeply human perspective on the lives and deaths of those who lived during British rule. These burial grounds summarize stories of missionaries, military officers, traders, administrators, and their families who succumbed to the unfamiliar and often hostile tropical environment of 18th and 19th-century India. Unfortunately, the graves are in bad shape. Only in the past few decades, an awareness has been created among the like-minded people who are serious about restoring the dying monuments of great antiquity. Already steps are afoot by the state authorities of Bengal in collaboration with some foreign agencies to restore them back to old glory.
cartoonstock.com

Jantoo Cartoons

.Among the earliest is St. John's Churchyard, in use since at least 1709. More prominent is the South Park Street Cemetery (SPSC), opened on 25 August 1767. Known as the “Great Cemetery of Asia,” it was one of the earliest non-church cemeteries globally and likely the largest Christian burial ground outside Europe and America during its time. It holds over 1,600 tombs of colonial officials, scholars, and merchants. Lt Col James Achilles Kirkpatrick (the White Mughal) and other well-known persons were buried here. Now protected by the Christian Burial Board (CBB) and archaeologists, the cemetery is undergoing Phase III of restoration and remains a popular heritage site.

LCR cemetery, John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune~ The Indian Vagabond

Opposite SPSC once stood the North Park Street Cemetery (1799), which no longer exists. Other vanished burial grounds include The Mission Cemetery (1773), built for the wife of Rev. Kiernander, Tiretta’s French Cemetery (1796), and the Greek and Portuguese cemeteries, parts of which were later donated to schools and churches. The Armenian Church of St. Nazareth (1724) contains the city’s oldest known Christian tombstone—that of Rezabeebeh (1630)—and the 1799 grave of Astwasatoor Mooradkhan, a founder of the Armenian College.

Grave of  Vivian Derozio, South Park Street Cemetery,
Kolkata Alamy

The Bhowanipore Cemetery, opened in 1782–83, served as a military burial ground and contains 95 First World War and 617 Second World War Commonwealth burials. The Lower Circular Road Cemetery (LCRC), inaugurated in 1840, remains active with more than 1.25 lakh burials. It was the site of Asia’s first gas crematorium in 1904, now defunct, with a small “Mini Cemetery” located nearby.

North Park street cemetery.Kolkatadouble-dolphin.blogspot.com

Above image: North Park Street Cemetery: Surviving tomb.This cemetery almost nonexistent......

Bhowanipore  Cemetery, Kolkata telegraphindia.com

Above image: Bhowanipore  cemetery, Kolkata.  Initially named for the nearby garrison of Fort William, the civil cemetery on DL Khan Road has been a resting place for service members and their dependents since it first opened in 1864..........

The Scottish Cemetery (1820) at Karaya Road and the Tollygunge Cemetery (established in 1942), which saw the highest number of recent burials after restoration, also survive. St. Stephen’s Cemetery, dating to 1820, is still in operation. These cemeteries originally grouped graves by denomination, but by the mid-20th century, war graves were consolidated into distinct sections.

 In the early period, a civil cemetery had been in use since 1864, many of the earlier burials of service personnel and their dependents being made from the nearby garrison at Fort William, After the new construction work in Ft. William in the 1880s, the old burial ground in the fort fell into disuse and the headstones were shifted and mounted on the walls at SPC (South Park Cemetery). It is a military burial ground and is closed to the public.

During the Second World War, various departments relevant to the war effort were posted to Calcutta and No 47 General Hospital was there from January 1943 to the beginning of February 1945.

The graves, originally, were set based on denominations and war graves and civilian graves got indiscriminately mingled. In 1954, on the church authorities' advice, war graves were moved by the Commission into the area with the largest number of war burials. This now forms a separate service section containing the graves of both world wars.

Many tombs reflect the tragic toll of tropical diseases like cholera, malaria, and dysentery—particularly in the post-monsoon season between August and December. Deaths due to venomous snakes and epidemics were common. Rudyard Kipling once remarked on the extravagant masonry used in these tombs, perhaps to prevent the spread of disease.

Today, the CBB, in collaboration with conservation architects and historians, continues to safeguard these monuments—each grave a silent witness to Kolkata’s colonial past, its glories and griefs preserved in stone and memory.