Architectural Dilettantes-Construction Professionals in British India 1600-1910. Part 2 PDF

The Construction History Society
Architectural dilettantes: construction professionals in British India 1600-1910. Part 2.

1860-1910: The advent of the professional
Author(s): Michael Mark Chrimes
Source: Construction History , Vol. 31, No. 1 (2016), pp. 99-140
Published by: The Construction History Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26489022
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Michael Mark Chrimes
Architectural dilettantes: construction professionals in British India

1600-1910.
Part 2. 1860-1910: The advent of the professional

Former Director, Engineering Policy and Innovation, Institution of Civil Engineers, London
Abstract
This second paper on British engineers who worked in India considers how British administrations in India managed
the design of public buildings in the second half of the nineteenth century. For most of the period this was a
responsibility of engineers in the Public Works Departments, led by officials who had initially been trained for
military service. Much of these engineers’ work was involved in the civil engineering of roads, railways, irrigation
and public health, but there was also a demand for public buildings whether associated with civil engineering or not.
The designers of these buildings are generally referred to anachronistically as architects, although most held
engineering positions in the Indian armies or, latterly, public works departments.
By looking at the careers of some of these ‘architects’, conclusions can be drawn about the professional training,
architectural inspiration, structural approaches and project leadership of the creators of the buildings of empire.
From this it will be suggested that, before 1900, in a meaningful sense there were no architects of empire, but a cadre
of engineers whose training enabled them to take on all tasks across the built environment.
Keywords
Professions, civil engineers, architects, architecture, education, British India, 1860-1910
Introduction
The professional environment of mid-Victorian Britain was very different to that in which the Honourable
East India Company (HEIC) had acquired its first trading posts in the seventeenth century, or indeed
established its territorial hegemony around 1800.1 There were now professional engineering bodies in
Britain and Ireland,2 with recognized routes to qualification through pupillage, sometimes supplemented
by attendance at a University, and two generations of regular work had made engineering an attractive
profession to the middle classes. Although the (Royal) Institute of British Architects had been established
in 1834 and the growth of the profession was less spectacular than that of engineers, the role of the
architect was well-established by 1860. Nevertheless, at that time civil engineers were still called upon to
design buildings, and some aspirant architects found employment as engineers. In these circumstances one
might have expected the Government of India (GOI) to recruit both civil engineers and architects for
service in the growing Public Works Departments (PWD), and the historic call on military engineers to
function as civil engineers and architects to diminish. Whilst increasing numbers of civil engineers were
recruited, the military engineers generally held the senior positions in the PWD, and continued to design
and build many public buildings through the nineteenth century. Many of the civil engineers went into the
much larger irrigation and railway branches of the PWD; here opportunities for architects were few.
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Architectural dilettantes: construction professionals in British India 1600-1910.
The large, early guaranteed railway franchises were dominated by British-based consultants and
European civil engineering staff throughout the construction period. Some railway projects had
architects for prestige buildings, but the later lines were generally state railways and dominated by the
PWD. Architects remained few in number, and the British Raj was built mainly by engineers.
Some architects in India and Britain railed against the taste of the engineers, there was a general debate
about the value and use of Indian architectural forms, and also the need to design building appropriately
for Indian climates. Much debate was ill-informed or a matter of personal taste, and several engineers
proved themselves to be very competent architects.
It can be argued the education and training of the engineers working in India represents the peak of the
engineering profession of the time, and often-cited criticism of British engineers as having a poor theoretical
and scientific grounding is misplaced. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, Engineers who had been
trained at the HEIC’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe, near Croydon in Surrey, were largely responsible
for the introduction of the Indo-Saracenic style, and proved competent copyists of the gothic revival, just as
military engineers had earlier adopted Palladian and neo-classical models. It was not really until 1900 under
the regime of the Viceroy Lord Curzon that the dominance of the engineering establishment came under
sustained attack and a handful of significant architectural appointments were made. That process in itself
revealed that an architectural career in India had little appeal for most UK professionals.
The impact of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58
The Indian Rebellion began as a mutiny in the cantonment of Meerut near Delhi by the locally-recruited
sepoys in the East India Company’s army on 10 May 1857, at a time when there were over 300,000
sepoys in the army, compared to about 50,000 British soldiers. It soon escalated into other mutinies and
civilian rebellions in the upper Ganges plain and central India before finally being contained in June
1858. The most obvious consequence of the Indian rebellion was the replacement of the East India
Company by the Government of India and the assimilation of its territorial possessions into the Empire.
The Indian Army and its engineer corps became part of the British Army, and the Indian Civil Service
became a state rather than private company bureaucracy.
As the British Army reasserted control in northern India following the Mutiny, its authority became
paramount. The political situation and military assessment of the vulnerability of the Empire resulted in
Figure 1. Jackatalla Barracks, Ootacamund, 1858. Clerk of works, Captain John Campbell, Madras
Army. At the time of its construction this was allegedly the largest public work in India. (Image:
Illustrated London News, 10 April 1858)
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an enormous expenditure on military works, including the strengthening of defences and development
of barracks (Fig. 1) and cantonments, during which many civil works were suspended.
As a consequence many civil engineers whose careers were largely concerned with ports, railways or
irrigation works found themselves supervising the building of barracks and military buildings. Thomas
William Butts Armstrong (1826–77), for example, supervised the construction of Jubbulpore barracks;
William Duff Bruce (1839–1900), the Cawnpore barracks; Crawford James Campbell (1832-76), the
military base at Delhi, including barrack blocks; William Welham Clarke (d. 1877) the Agra Barracks
and the rebuilding of Muttra church. Military engineers, too, who otherwise played important roles in
civil infrastructure, were also re-assigned to military construction, for example Colonel W. A.
Crommelin and Lieut. Col. Julian St John Hovendon (1831–70). To support this work the GOI issued a
series of associated circulars on subjects as varied as white ants, military hospitals, bakeries, artillery
buildings, privies, and wash houses.
The military also took over the railways. Civil engineers such as C. G. Wray of the East Indian Railway
were called on to assist, and railway stations were re-designed as defensive positions, a classic example
being Lahore Railway Station, the work of the civil engineer William Brunton at Lahore. (Fig. 2)
Figure 2. Lahore Railway Station, 1859-60. Engineer/architect, William Brunton. (Photo: Wikimedia
commons, attr. W.H. Jackson, 1895, US Library of Congress)
It was not until the mid-1860s that expenditure on civil buildings re-asserted itself. In 1867 W. D. Bruce
was transferred to Calcutta as Executive Engineer in charge of the 2nd Calcutta Division, where he
remained for 3 years. Work there included supervising several major new public buildings including the
Telegraph Office, the High Court, and the Indian museum. The High Court building is of some interest
for the use of hoop iron for reinforcement in its foundation slab.3
Pre-existing cantonments were enlarged and their separation from the neighbouring Indian population
centres more firmly established. Military engineers used European models, typically gothic revival
churches4 and classical and Italianate civic buildings, as can be seen in the work of Major Richard
Sankey in St Andrew’s Church (1864), the Secretariat (now High Court) (1864-68) (Fig. 3), and the
Museum (-1877) in Bangalore. He had designed the gothic All Saints Cathedral in Nagpur while
stationed there before the rebellion.
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Figure 3. Secretariat Building, Bangalore, 1864-68. Engineer, Richard Sankey. (Photo: Muhammad
Mahdi Karim, 2010)
Captain J. L. L. Morant (1839-86), later to be briefly engaged as Consulting Architect to the Madras
Government, designed a large number of buildings at Ootacamund while stationed there. (Fig. 4) He
visited the UK to study tile manufacture.
Figure 4. Garden Houses at Ootacamund, c.1870. Engineer/architect, J. L. L. Morant. These buildings

of brick and mortar had corrugated-iron roofs painted externally in pale blue with bands. (Image:
Professional papers on Indian engineering, Vol. 3, 2nd series, 1874, Frontispiece, Courtesy ICE
Archives)
Barrack failures
The barracks programme was to provide ammunition for critics of the involvement of military officers
in building work and, by extension, the competence of the PWD. Public attention had been drawn to the
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conditions of troops in reports on the Crimean War in Europe and the Mutiny in India. A Royal
Commission (1863) looked at the sanitary state of the army in India, revealing mortality rates of c. 70
per 1000 p.a. compared with an average of 7 to 9 in England and Wales for a population of similar age.
It was not as severe for European officers, but still c. 30 per 1000.5 The poor quality of barracks for
European troops was apparent. The Government of India turned to the Army Sanitary Commission and
its advisor the civil engineer Robert Rawlinson for advice.6
Original barracks for European troops in India had been low narrow buildings, raised only a little above
ground level, with troops eating at tables between beds in the sleeping quarters. The first improvement
to these conditions was the introduction, well before the rebellion, of two-storey buildings with
dormitories on both floors, for example at Fort William, and at Ellenborough Barrack, Allahabad. Under
the Governor Generalship of Dalhousie, immediately before the rebellion, improved barracks were built
at Lahore, Silkot, Rawalpindi, Naushhahra, and Peshawar. They were single-storey, 25 ft. high, with a
slate roof, and with separate mess accommodation; nevertheless there was still insufficient
accommodation for the troops based there. Following the start of the rebellion, European troop numbers
nearly doubled, and more barracks were urgently required. In 1864 a plan was approved to spend £10M
on barracks for the whole European force.7 Colonel W. A. Crommelin (1823–86) was put in charge as
Inspector General of Military Works, and the standard design recommended by Rawlinson was adopted.
This design comprised two-storey buildings, with dormitories on the upper floor, and the mess, library,
and stores on the ground floor. (Fig. 5) External walls were of masonry, with iron-truss roofs and
corrugated-iron roofing. To provide adequate ventilation and windows above the verandahs, the height
of the upper storey was 16 ft and the lower 20 ft. Generally there was a provision of 90 sq. ft. per man.
The designs were modified, particularly at Peshawar and for use in Burma, and in 1870 it was decided
that two-storeys were not required in dry climates; an alternative, less-spacious design was developed
for hill stations.
Figure 5. Standard barrack design for India, 1864. Engineer/architect, Robert Rawlinson. Cross- section
and part of longitudinal section (Image: Army Sanitary Commission. Sanitary Works for improving
Indian stations, 1864.)
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By 1871 £2,592,205 had been spent on new barracks on the plains, £192,737 on improvements to
existing barracks, £371500 at hill stations, with £371,856 planned for 1871-72. This was only a third of
the £10.8m spent on military works since 1862. It was estimated that a further £1,250,000 was required
to provide accommodation for all the European troops. The works were not cheap; at that time Chelsea
barracks in London cost £168 per man, while in India the costs varied from £189-286 per man.
Given the scale of the enterprise it is not surprising that some things went wrong. New barrack blocks at
Sagar, Nasirabad, Jubbulpore and Neemuch, as well as military buildings at Allahabad,8 all failed during
construction during 1866-72, involving costs of over £300,000.9
The failures were investigated by independent commissions, whose reports concluded with
recommendations that the, generally military, officers be reassigned from the PWD and/or demoted.
Some of the military officers involved in supervising the construction were not engineers by training but
had been assigned to the PWD to meet the demand for new military buildings. With the publication of
the commissioners’ reports and allocation of blame discussion of the responsibility for the failures
appeared to go away. However, in 1881 these barracks failures were the subject of acrimonious
correspondence in The Times between the Duke of Argyll, former Secretary of State for India (1868-74)
and the then President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, James Abernethy.10 Argyll, by then out of
political favour, was alleging a great waste of public funds in India, and cited the barracks failures as
examples of the incompetence of the civil engineers employed in the PWD. Abernethy argued,
convincingly, that most decisions had been made by military officers acting in a civil capacity, and that
the civil engineer Campbell, although held culpable for the failure at Sagar, had not been involved in the
project until most of the key decisions had been taken. Campbell continued in the PWD after the
investigation, working again on railway works where his early experience had been gained.
In most cases, the buildings had been badly erected, probably because of poor supervision arising from
a combination of poor health and inexperience. At Allahabad insufficient lime in the mortar was a
contributory factor. The whole episode is indicative of overstretched staff, but it served to focus the
minds of the senior staff on the importance of education for the engineers working with the PWD, in both
India and Britain.
Education and training
An immediate impact of the rebellion was the closure of Addiscombe College. It held its last examination
in 1861. This decision followed the merger of the British and Indian armies, and it was believed that
Chatham could supply the necessary British engineer recruits. There had been recognition that
recruitment of civil engineers to supplement the supply from the Indian army had been unsuccessful in
terms of both numbers and quality. Proby Cautley, the engineer largely responsible for the design of the
Ganges Canal, argued that it would be best if young engineers were recruited who could be inducted in
the ways of the PWD, rather than recruiting engineers of a variety of expectation and experience. In 1859
these factors led to the establishment by the India Office of examinations for civil candidates wishing to
work in the Public Works Department. Named after the then Secretary of State, Lord Stanley, the new
recruits were known as the ‘Stanley engineers’. The examinations embraced language and the arts as
well as scientific and technical subjects. The few UK colleges where engineering was taught, such as
Trinity College Dublin, were encouraged to get their graduates to apply.
Addiscombe-trained engineers continued to be of significance in the PWD until the 1880s. However, the
supply of engineers from the Royal Engineers’ school at Chatham in Kent soon proved inadequate for
the needs of the public works and railways. UK-trained and university-educated civil engineers took up
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some of the slack, but many more were required. Only a handful of British/Irish applicants were capable
of passing the examination, and the intake was enlarged by bending the rules. Retiring engineers from
the Guaranteed Railways and private irrigation companies were recruited directly. In the period 1859-70
43% of places were unfilled by the Stanley system. In 1870 75 took the examination but only 12
appointments were made. At that time the PWD were calling for 50 new recruits, Chatham could only
provide 20-25. Within 10 years it was recognized that the Stanley system had failed.
The tradition of India-specific education had continued in the India-based colleges although promotion
to higher grades was difficult for the native students. Thomason College of Civil Engineering in
Roorkee, founded in 1847, produced a particularly high standard of graduate, Whilst on furlough, the
Bengal Engineer General (Sir) George Tomkyns Chesney (1830-95) argued for the establishment of a
college in England educating engineers specifically for Indian service. The India Office, then under
Argyll, was agreeable, influenced by criticism of the calibre of the PWD and escalating costs, as well as
the shortage of successful candidates under the Stanley system.
The Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper’s Hill near Egham in Surrey, was established in 1871. It
was believed that any expansion at Chatham would have been wasteful of resources as so much time was
spent on military engineering which would effectively have been wasted. It was intended that successful
recruits would join the service as assistant engineers and then be promoted as they demonstrated their
competence in the field. The proposal was opposed by several of the British and Irish universities
offering engineering courses, but the failure of their students to pass the PWD examinations meant the
Secretary of State had little time for their protests. The Institution of Civil Engineers also opposed the
creation of the college, which could be seen as undermining the belief of senior members in the primacy
of practical experience over the value of taught engineering science. Again, the poor performance of
applicants in the entrance examination did not help their case. Interestingly, Charles Vignoles, then
President of the ICE, also argued that it might result in the creation of a monolithic cadre of engineers.
Whilst he saw the proposed college could consequently be a barrier to innovation and new ideas, others
might argue this as a justification for its creation as there had been much friction in the 1860s between
military officers and their civil colleagues.
At Cooper’s Hill, architecture was again on the curriculum, with Thomas Henry Eagles teaching
architectural drawing from 1872 to 1892, and the architecture course forming part of a full year of study.
Prize-winning portfolios of architectural drawings by students Henry Wilmott (Fig. 6) and R. Tillard are
held in the ICE archives.11 Wilmott was able to use his design skills in the United Provinces,12 rising to
be Chief engineer.
Throughout its existence critics argued against a state-sponsored education institution for India with its
costs borne by tax payers. In the late 1870s the course was extended to four years at a time when the
demand for recruits was reduced due to cuts in the PWD budget. This enabled a full-year of practical
experience to be completed at a reduced cost, rather than the previous use of vacations with only a term
or so of practical experience. A Forestry course was also introduced to broaden the purpose of the
college. Cooper’s Hill was closed in 1906, by which time it had been successfully argued that quality
recruits were now available from the growing number of university engineering departments in Britain.
The overall benefit to the PWD of Coopers Hill was difficult to measure, but the relative academic
quality of its students compared to those who had been recruited to the PWD in the 1860s is indisputable.
In the 1880s 50% of new PWD recruits were from Cooper’s Hill, 20% from Chatham, and the remainder
from Indian colleges. Schools of Art in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were intended to raise the skills
of Indians, but were criticized for training Indian students in European tastes, part of a general debate
about the quality of Imperial architecture.13
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Figure 6. RIEC Cooper’s Hill. Prize-winning drawing by student H.M. Wilmott, 1890. (Image: Wilmott
portfolio, ICE archives)
The recruitment of British civil engineers as covenanted employees of the HEIC from the mid-1850s
might have been expected to lead to a career path for non-military engineers in the PWD. However, the
Madras Government failed to honour the agreement and did not treat them as covenanted employees. By
the mid-1860s there was much criticism of the treatment of these civil employees,14 who, from 1867,
outnumbered the military officers in India generally. It was suggested that those working in Bombay and
Bengal, at least those who joined 1855-58, had better salary and promotion prospects.15 However those
who joined after the introduction of direct examinations and the recruitment reforms by Lord Stanley,
had inferior salaries and pensions compared to their army counterparts and those recruited from Roorkee.
Of 58 civil engineers recruited 1859-64, only one had attained the rank of Executive Engineer compared
with 7 from the 52 military recruits in that period.16 A number of these civil recruits, such as Robert
Chisholm and William Barnfather were to play a significant role as architects (see below), but complaints
in the architectural and engineering press about their treatment was a direct consequence of their civil
status rather than the nature of their architectural responsibilities in the PWD. Pay in lower grades was
up to 50% lower than that for military officers in the PWD. Not until 1870 were civil and military pay
equalised in the PWD as part of the reform package that saw the establishment of Cooper’s Hill, and
acknowledged that “the present civil rates are hardly adequate to attract to the service the best class of
young civil engineers”.17
The move to appoint ‘civil architects’ in the ‘Presidency towns’ of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta in the
1850s had had little lasting impact on the design of public buildings because their positions as military
officers meant their first priority was to deal with the Mutiny when it began. This is illustrated in Bengal
where Lieutenant George Price (1821-71) had been appointed as acting civil architect on 27 March 1857,
based in Calcutta. With previous experience on the Ganges Canal, his time as architect was consumed
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by barrack and prison building and reconstruction, and he had no time to devote to more significant
works such as the new Post Office in Calcutta. As a result, expertise was sought amongst staff of the
railway companies. As the rebellion calmed down, Price was posted to Hyderabad to take charge of the
PWD there, without getting an opportunity to demonstrate his architectural credentials in Calcutta.
Once the private railway companies began to build up their franchises from the 1860s, several of their
British-trained staff with architectural credentials had influence more generally. Walter Granville of the
East Bengal Railway effectively took on Price’s responsibilities. Generally, however, engineering
appointments were still preferred. In Madras, the decision to appoint Chisholm as Consulting Architect
in 1870 was initially resisted by the GOI. It was not until the appointment of James Ransome as the
Consulting Architect to the Government of India in 1902, inspired by the desire of the Viceroy, Lord
Curzon, to reform entrenched interests in the PWD, that there was an architect with any authority in post.
Architects and engineers 1860-1900
As the century progressed, differences developed between the main centres of government, both in
architectural style and the organization of the design of public buildings. From 1860 more architectural
voices were heard commentating on the quality and appropriate style for buildings of the Raj, and it was
the Military Engineers who bore the brunt of the criticism for the perceived poor quality of imperial
architecture. As The Builder noted in an 1865 editorial on “architecture and engineering in India”:
We certainly surpassed ourselves in India and succeeded in inventing a style of building

(irreverently known as the Military Board style), which for ugliness beat everything that ever was
constructed by man.18
Although some UK-trained architects found work in India, mainly as civil engineers in the PWD, the
military continued to dominate the PWD, the most important client. T. R. Smith, one of the few architects
with first-hand experience of working in India, regarded this as a problem:
… neither architecture nor building is the proper function of military engineers, and that as an
executive this body is not suited to the requirements of work of high architectural pretensions….
However he continued:
I must add that this corps contains individual officers who have distinguished themselves in India
as architects by their designs and executed works; and that they have been pioneers in the work of
constructing in that country buildings for European use.19
The debate about how to tackle the relationship between Indian and European styles was neatly
summarized by Henry Cole, driving force behind the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and the
creation of the South Kensington Museum (V&A), at the start of the period:
there was nothing so bad as when an India attempted to copy European art; and he confessed he had
some fear for the schools of design in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, instead of leading the natives
to advance in their own styles of art, would create a hybrid style, the most detestable ever seen. In
his opinion we had a great deal more to learn from the Indians than we could hope to teach them in
the designing of patterns, and he protested against schools of art in India, which should corrupt
native talent and taste….20
Many architects felt that little progress was made over the next 30 years. A typical critic, the architect
Purdon Clarke, wrote in 1890:
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It would require a heavy book to describe our various attempts at raising monuments of shame for
ourselves in India. After running the gamut of the styles in Greek, Strawberry Hill Gothic, and
representations of the several periods of Pointed Architecture in colleges and churches, we
eventually woke up to the fact that India had a style more suited to the country that any of those we
had tried to introduce, and, without waiting to consider, at once started people who had little
previous experience or education in Oriental design to erect important works, which, though
certainly more appropriate than ANY of our previous efforts, yet, unfortunately, will remain, as they
are generally very well built-for a very long time as records of our want of appreciation of the
essentials of eastern art…21
By the early twentieth century many British-trained engineers and architects working in India had
adopted Indian elements in their buildings. Nevertheless, this approach was stridently criticized by
Edwin Lutyens in 1912 as he strove to develop an imperial style for New Delhi (see below):
Personally I do not believe there is any real Indian architecture or any great tradition. There are just
spurts by various mushroom dynasties with about as much intellect as there is in any other art
nouveau.22
For him classical principles with some Indian decoration were the ideal; he spoke disparagingly of
“Mogulese and Hindoo contraptions”,23 and commented that Moghul architecture was “piffle” and Indo-
Saracenic style “half-caste”.24 Likewise, Herbert Baker, Lutyens’ collaborator at New Delhi, saw
Bombay’s Victorian gothic as a “nightmare”.25 No doubt this rhetoric was intended in part to ensure their
freedom to design as they wished, rather than to satisfy official committees and orthodoxies of taste.
Calcutta, Bengal and Upper India
The Indian railway network had grown slowly in the 1850s and the first termini at Howrah, for Calcutta,
Madras and Bombay were modest affairs, designed by the engineers. For example, the Bombay terminus
of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway was a simple iron structure with corrugated iron roofs supplied
by Cochrane’s. (Fig. 7)
Development of the railways began a second phase of activity after the rebellion. In Bengal, for example,
which had been severely affected by the rebellion, this offered a great opportunity for the man who
became the leading architect there in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Walter L. B. Granville
(1819-74) arrived in India in 1858 as the clerk of works for the Eastern Bengal Railway on a salary of
£650, approximately one third that of the chief engineer Wellington Purdon, who had carried out the
surveys for the line.26 I. K. Brunel was the UK-based Consulting Engineer for this line, and sketches of
the layout of Howrah terminus survive in his notebooks; he is assumed to have designed the train shed,
but had died and been replaced by Sir John Hawkshaw (1811-91) before work had begun on the station
building. Granville’s earlier career is uncertain, but included a spell as an agricultural implement maker
with offices in Holborn, and bankruptcy around 1851. By the time the line opened in 1862 Granville was
described both as Civil Engineer and Superintendent of station works and architect, an indication he had
acquitted himself as a designer of buildings as well as a supervisor of their construction,27 although his
post-nominal ‘CE’ suggests which profession was more widely recognized in the Raj.
The Calcutta terminus (Fig. 8) occupied 141 acres with 1000 ft. long station platforms covered by a
wrought-iron roof with 3 spans. The foundation works were complex, on made ground over former tanks
(reservoirs) and alluvial soils. Sheet piles were used to exclude water and, in addition to brick
foundations, a concrete raft extending 45 ft. below the new ground level was constructed. The main
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waiting hall, where Grenville can be assumed to have had significant influence, was 200 ft. long, 40 ft.
wide and 40 ft. high; it had no windows and was lit and ventilated by an arcaded clerestory which formed
a gallery.28 The arrangement was modelled on palaces at Nineveh and Khorsabad taken from Fergusson’s
Handbook of architecture.29 This was probably the first terminus, closely followed by Lahore, to be built
on a large scale.
Proposals for new civic buildings in Calcutta supplied by M. D. Wyatt, former Surveyor to HEIC, and
Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-78) were deemed too expensive by the Government in India and the civil
Figure 7. Bombay Terminus of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, completed in 1852. Cotton bales
lying ready for shipment to England. (Image: Illustrated London News, 1862)
Figure 8. Eastern Bengal Railway, Calcutta Terminus, 1862. Engineers: I.K. Brunel; J. Hawkshaw and
W. Purdon; Architect: W. Granville; Contractor: Brassey, Paxton & Wythes. West elevation under
construction. (Photo from: G. Ham, Illustrated handbook of the Eastern Bengal Railway. 1862. ICE
archives)
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architect, George Price was too busy to take their design on. The railway engineer C. G. Wray undertook
some work, including the German (or continental) gothic style St James’s Church, Calcutta,30 for which
Scott’s design had been considered too extravagant and expensive.31 At two thirds the cost, Wray’s
proposal was within the allocated budget. He was helped by Granville on this project and soon
afterwards, the Bengal authorities entrusted Granville with the responsibility for planning new prestige
buildings in Calcutta with the position of Consulting Architect to the Government of India at an annual
salary of £1600, which he held from 1863 to 1868. Granville’s architects’ office was entirely staffed by
native Indians. His works included St James’s Memorial Church at Cawnpore in the ‘Lombardic style’,
and a series of important public buildings in the capital for which the predominant style was neoclassical:
the Post office, (1864-68) with a corner dome and Corinthian order colonnades, the new High Court
Building (1872), the Indian Museum (1867-75) and the new Senate House for the University (1866-72).
Granville’s High Court Building (Fig. 9) needed the attention of the PWD engineers to tackle some
settlement of the foundations. Allegedly modelled on Scott’s design for the Rathaus in Hamburg, itself
a reprise of the Ypres Cloth Hall, the height of its central tower was lowered to reduce the load. William
H. White another PWD civil engineering trainee, designed the Court of Small Cases (1878). Granville’s
Senate House for the University (Fig. 10) raised some controversy back in Britain as, almost incredibly,
the decorative stonework was made with Ransome’s Patent Stone32 imported from London.33 Such
imports were criticized strongly by those, including Henry Cole, who believed that Indian materials
should be used:
It might possibly be right to have Doric columns in the University of Calcutta, but it could hardly
be right that they should be of cast stucco imported from England Could they think of anything more
likely to debase Indian art than taking cast stucco from England to Calcutta.34
Granville left the PWD by the end of 1868, probably on health grounds, and last appears in a Calcutta
Directory in 1870. The GOI, desperate to control PWD expenditure, were not keen on appointing a
replacement Consulting Architect and hereafter PWD engineers dominated.
The Telegraph Office in Calcutta, (Fig. 11) clad in terracotta and in Italianate style with a campanile, was
designed by William Barnfather (1818-82) based on an original scheme by Granville and Benjamin
Clark, another engineer who had worked on the High Court Building. Barnfather, whose father was an
architect, was a PWD civil engineering recruit of the late 1850s and had trained as an engineer on the
Figure 9. High Court Building, Calcutta, 1872. Architect, Walter Granville. (Photo: W.G. Stretton, 1875
http://calcuttaphotos1945.blogspot.co.uk/2010_07_01_archive.html)
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Figure 10. Calcutta University Senate House, completed 1872, now demolished. Architect, W. B.
Granville, (Photo: Early twentieth century photograph)
Figure 11. Telegraph Office, Calcutta. Begun in 1867 based on design of Walter Granville and Benjamin
Clark, modified by W. Barnfather. Completed in 1870. (Photo: Indian Engineering, 4th August, 1888,
following p.90)
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railways in the UK. He led an architects’ office in the PWD which was in the same building as
Granville’s office.
Another railway architect, who gained more widespread fame, was Richard Roskell Bayne (1827-
1901).35 His East Indian Railway offices (1881-84) in Calcutta were in Italian palazzo style, but the
internal structure is more interesting with wrought-iron trusses, beams and columns made of reused rails,
and floors of brick on concrete jack arches Bayne eventually succeeded Granville as the leading architect
in Calcutta and worked in Madras, Lucknow, Allahabad and Darbunga. He had come to India as an
employee of the East India Railway in 1866 after training with Charles Barry and Digby Wyatt, and
undertaking an architectural tour of Europe. His official title in the EIR was variously ‘draughtsman’
(1860s), ‘special assistant engineer’ (1881) or ‘personal assistant to the Chief Engineer’ (1890), rather
than architect.
Bombay
The Presidencies of Bombay and Madras were relatively untouched by the events of the rebellion. As the
1860s progressed, Bombay’s position in the Raj was strengthened by a number of factors, notably
improved railway communication with the interior of India, and the opening of the Suez Canal at the end
of the decade. The short term impact of the American Civil War on world cotton markets made Bombay
a boom town, and property speculation became rife. Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor from 1862 to 1867,
was determined to fashion a new city by the demolition of redundant ramparts and letting building lots
in the released land, and along a new esplanade for controlled development. The Bombay Baroda and
Central India Railway were also given rights to develop reclaimed land along Back Bay. The Ramparts
Removal Committee (RRC) under the Chairmanship of Colonel W. D. Dickenson, and the Esplanade Fee
Committee were established by the mid-1860s to help supervise these developments and the funds raised
by sale of lots used to provide a range of new public offices. The RRC was provided with architectural
advice from James Trubshawe (c. 1817-82) who arrived in 1864, coincidentally the year that Major
Charles Frederick North (1815-1906), the military engineer acting as government architect, retired.
Trubshawe succeeded him in July 1865. Trubshawe was a member of a well-known family of
Staffordshire masons and civil engineers. Although he has been credited with a handful of buildings, the
majority of the new public offices in Bombay were designed and built by military engineers in the PWD.
He was back in Europe in 1866, apparently on furlough, but never to return. A suspicion of scandal
attaches to his professional reputation.36
The heart of the Bombay re-development was the Maidan Oval and Elphinstone/Horniman Circle with
façades built to comply with an official Italianate style, in front of the new town hall. Bombay businesses
came forward to sponsor many buildings. The resulting buildings of Victorian Bombay display perhaps
the finest British gothic ensemble to have survived from that era. The main public buildings, costing in
excess of £1 million, were the Secretariats, the University Library and Convocation Hall, the Law courts,
Public works offices, the Post Office, and the Telegraph Department building. They established the style
that was emulated across the city through the remainder of the nineteenth century, and were all the work
of British architects and PWD engineers. Engineers based in India could have found many sources of
inspiration in the pages of The Builder and other architectural journals of the time.
In fact, the first example of the gothic revival building in Bombay, and indeed India, predated these
developments. The Afghan Memorial church of St Johns, Coloba (1847-58) (Fig. 12) was designed by the
civil engineer Henry Conybeare (1823-84). The British architects Anthony Salvin (1799-1881) and James
Macduff Derrick (c.1806-59) had been approached, but their designs were dismissed as too costly. Instead,
the project was awarded to Conybeare who was the local Municipal engineer at the time. Given that
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Conybeare is best-known for his work on the Bombay water supply, this may seem surprising but the
surprise is lessened when learning that his father was a distinguished cleric and the church followed the
well-known recommendations by the Ecclesiological Society on the use of the gothic or English form.
Figure 12. Afghan Memorial Church, Coloba, 1847-58. Engineer/architect, Henry Conybeare (Photo:
Wikimedia commons)
However, some architects were at work in Bombay in the 1860s. James Trubshawe was credited for
designing an enlargement of St Thomas’s Cathedral (1865), although funds soon ran out,37 and the
extension to Elphinstone College, and the Post Office in Italian gothic,38 where he was assisted by the
architect Walter Paris (1842-1900). Paris had been brought out to India as an architectural assistant to the
RRC; he was acting government architect from April 1866 and later designed the Telegraph Office before
leaving India in 1870. However, it is evident from surviving records that Trubshawe’s alleged designs at
St Thomas’s Cathedral and elsewhere were in fact the work of Paris and other assistants in the PWD.39
The architectural work of Trubshawe and Paris in Bombay has been overshadowed by the buildings of
George Gilbert Scott at Bombay University (1869-74) – the Convocation Hall in French renaissance
style and the Library in gothic style.40 (Fig. 13) Scott was liberated by the climate in his choice of designs
but constrained by the funds available to his clients. Following a PWD review of the estimates, Scott
effectively walked away from the University projects, as he had done earlier when approached about the
Afghan Memorial Church. The project was taken forward by PWD staff - George Twigge-Molecey and
Paris, who reduced the scale and cost of Scott’s proposals by around 60%. Neither Paris, who is better
known for his later career as a water colourist in the USA, nor Molecey, also responsible for the Sassoon
Building at Elphinstone High School (1872-75), had architectural careers of any note outside the PWD.
The military engineer Lt. Colonel James Augustus Fuller (1828-1902) was responsible for the
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construction work, and had also supervised Paris when he was working on the Telegraph Office.
Generally the Addiscombe-trained engineers took the lead in designing public buildings. One example
was Captain Henry St Clair Wilkins (1828-96) who had been educated privately and at Addiscombe,
Wilkins was posted to the Bombay PWD in 1847 where he was given additional training in civil
architecture. An early example of his work is Frere Hall, Karachi. (Fig. 14)
A more substantial project by Wilkins was The Secretariat (Fig. 15) designed in 1865, and built in 1867-
74, coeval with St Pancras Station in London, designed by George Gilbert Scott. Costing around
£125,000 and built in a Venetian gothic style, it had an arcaded central range with a lofty tower and
Figure 13. Convocation Hall (left) 1869-74, Library 1869-78 and the Rajabai Clock Tower (under
construction) 1869-78, Bombay University. Architect, Gilbert Scott. (Photo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajabai_Clock_Tower )
Figure 14. Frere Hall, Karachi, 1863-1865. Engineer/architect, Henry St Clair Wilkins. (Image:
Professional papers on Indian engineering. Vol. V, 1868 p. 111, ICE Archives)
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polychromatic decoration, with bands of yellow brickwork and stone, and carvings by native craftsmen.
Wilkins designed the Public Works Office in a similar style.
Figure 15. Bombay Secretariat, 1867-74. Engineer/architect, Henry St Clair Wilkins. (Image: The
Builder, 20 November 1875, courtesy ICE archives)
After a spell in Poona, Wilkins returned to Europe in 1865-66 and then commanded the Royal Engineers
in the 1867-68 Abyssinia campaign. During this time, his buildings were taken on by Captain (later
General) James Fuller, a fellow Addiscombe graduate, who was appointed Architectural Executive
Engineer in July 1865, and acted as Secretary to the Architectural Executive Committee which succeeded
the Ramparts Removal Committee. Fuller’s first work was possibly the Mechanics or Sassoon Institute
(1867-70) which he undertook with advice from the local architectural engineering practice Scott
McLelland & Co. His most substantial commission were the Law Courts (1871-79) in an early English
gothic style, with Venetian overtones, influenced by the new Royal Courts of Justice in London. It was
562 ft. long and 187 ft. wide, with a tower 178 ft. high, and had rubble-filled walls of chuna, a local
limestone, faced with basalt. Costing around £165,000 it was the most expensive of all the civic
buildings of the time. Fuller was also responsible for the gothic-styled Goculdas Tejpall Native General
Hospital41 and Cama Albless Obstetric Hospital. In the case of the former the detailing of the window
arches anticipated the Indo-Saracenic style.
The engineer Colonel Walter Mardon Ducat (1837-1902) was one of the later Addiscombe graduates,
assisted in designing and supervised a number of works around Bombay and Tansa in the 1860s, and was
Executive Engineer for Reclamations. In the 1870s he was stationed at Kolhapur where he worked on a
building generally credited to Colonel Mant (see below), and he later designed the Gymkhana Club at
Poona. He is credited with designing the Shivaji Markets in Poona cantonment which has a functional
basalt masonry exterior with an arcade of gothic arches, and internal cast-iron columns supporting iron
roof trusses; it seems to represent a compromise between using local Indian building materials and the
desire to take advantage of the durability and economy of construction using imported iron elements.
The critical success of the Bombay works after the late-1860s was partly due to the sourcing of local
stone and using suitably-trained native sculptors, following the work of Lockwood Kipling at the
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Bombay School of Art. Indeed, the success of Molecey and Paris in reducing the costs of Gilbert Scott’s
buildings for the University was probably achieved by making effective use of local materials and
builders’ skills.
From a structural point of view, the most innovative building to be built in Bombay at this time was
Watson’s Esplanade Hotel, (Fig. 16) the first fully-iron-framed habitable building designed for
commercial purposes.42 Unable to make progress locally with his plans, the developer John Watson
turned to the UK. The civil engineer R. M. Ordish designed the building, and the ironwork was supplied
by the Phoenix Foundry of Derby. Designs were finalized in 1867, based around an 11ft 9in modular grid
of cast-iron columns and cast and wrought-iron beams. The Hotel was opened in 1871. The PWD
supported the construction of the structure as a prototype at no cost to the public purse, despite
Trubshawe’s opposition. Reported in The Architect and Phoenix’s trade catalogues, there is no evidence
that the success of the ‘experiment’ was followed up, either in India or in the UK. In the former case, this
was probably partly due to the costs of importing the construction materials.
Figure 16. Watson’s Hotel, Bombay, 1868-71. Engineer, R.M. Ordish. (Photo: Wikimedia commons,
1880s)
The PWD also took over the project for what became the Victoria and Albert Museum in Bombay, (Fig.
17) which had been conceived before the Mutiny by local businessmen. It was designed in a Palladian
style by William Tracey, another of Bombay’s municipal engineers, and George Wilkins Terry. A locally-
based firm, Scott McClelland & Co, were also involved; they recommended the use of interior iron
framing and designed the clock tower. While monitoring the construction, the PWD discovered problems
with the foundations, and some reconstruction was necessary. The cast ironwork for the interior was
made in Birmingham but was lost at sea, and had to be replaced by locally-sourced ironwork.43
The domination of these various projects by the PWD led to widespread criticism. The Bombay Builder
remarked: “Who is there in the public works department who has the smallest artistic power or who even knows
anything about architecture”, and most unfairly “In the Secretariat there is not a single arch turned correctly”.44
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Figure 17. Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay, 1872. Engineer/architects, William Tracey and George
Wilkins Terry. Interior following recent restoration work (Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Dr._Bhau_Daji_Laad_Museum_-_Interior.JPG)
Elsewhere in the Presidency, at Poona which had been a major military cantonment and summer retreat
since 1820, the Sassoon Hospital and Garden Reach were the work of Wilkins and Major G. J. Melliss.
Also at Poona, Trubshawe designed ‘Ganesh Khind’, the new Governor’s House, originally
commissioned for Governor Sir Bartle Frere in an Italianate style based on Osbourne House in the Isle
of Wight. The project was to go hopelessly over budget: estimated in 1865 to cost around £35,000,
expenditure was approaching £100,000 by 1872, long after Trubshawe’s departure.
Sir William Emerson (1843-1924)
In reality it was unreasonable to expect UK-based architects to influence practice in South Asia; Gilbert
Scott’s interventions were brief and curtailed, in contrast to the work of career engineers in the PWD.
However, the then unknown British architect William Emerson, who arrived in India to present William
Burges’ drawings for Bombay School of Art, made his career in India, and later rose to become President
of RIBA. The school, like many proposals, was abandoned for financial reasons, but, Emerson remained
in Bombay and designed the Arthur Crawford Market buildings, in what he claimed was a 12th-century
gothic style. It is an extraordinary mixture, drawing on Egyptian as well as Indian sources. Costing
£160,000, with a clock tower, and timber galleries, it is a mess of styles. (Fig. 18) Of particular interest
are the main halls whose wrought-iron Polonceau roof trusses are supported on cast-iron columns and
with corrugated iron roofs, designed by the engineer Russell Aitken - a successor to Conybeare.
Despite Conybeare and Aitken’s involvement in such works, the UK-based Builder journal remarked in
1869: “The few civil engineers [in India] are snubbed and made to eat humble pie to military engineers,
who really do nothing but sit at [the] office and write minutes and reports, and carry out a system of
scarlet tape unknown even in red tape England”.45 It was not only architects who felt aggrieved at the
way in which the military dominated public works,
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Figure 18. Crawford markets, Bombay, 1868-69. Architect, William Emerson; Engineer, Russell Aitken.
(Photo: H. Sanat https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crawford_Market.png)
Emerson’s eclectic style is seen again at the Girgaum Church (1870-73), in a sort of French gothic style.
Elsewhere in the Presidency, Emerson designed Allahabad Cathedral (1869-93), and Muir College,
Allahabad (1872-78) in contrasting Early-English gothic and Indo-gothic styles. Later works included a
hospital (1879-93) and a palace (1894-95) in Bhavnagar in Gujarat. Emerson seems to have become
increasingly persuaded that “it was impossible for the architecture of the west to be suitable to the natives
of the east”,46 and that they should adapt the architecture of the east to their needs. Back in Britain at the
end of his career, he was elected President of RIBA and returned to India for a last hurrah as architect of
the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, discussed below.
Frederick William Stevens (1847-1900)

The PWD engineer-dominated architectural tradition continued in Bombay into the late 1880s. One
product of the PWD career system would finally be fully acknowledged as an architect. Frederick
William Stevens (1847-1900) was trained by Charles Edward Davis who was the Surveyor or municipal
engineer to the Corporation of Bath. Stevens took the competitive examination for service in the PWD
and was admitted as an Assistant Engineer in 1867, working under Fuller, and was later elected a
member of ICE. He worked on the gothic Poona law courts under Major Melliss. His first major work,
under Fuller, was the Royal Alfred Sailors’ Home 1872-76, in an Indian-influenced gothic style, with
architectural ironwork imported from Macfarlane’s of Glasgow. His Victoria terminus in Bombay (1878-
87) (Fig. 19) is generally regarded as the finest gothic revival building in India. Replacing the original
1850s terminus of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, it is an asymmetrical design with a central dome
and cost £250,000. The decorative sculpture was designed by the Bombay School of Art, and used local
stone to great effect.
In 1888 Stevens resigned from the PWD and set up in private practice as a UK-based architect. The
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drawings for the 1888-93 Municipal Buildings, a combination of Venetian gothic and Indo-Saracenic styles,
modified for the Indian climate, were made in England. His final works were generally aesthetically less
successful – the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway Terminus at Churchgate (1894-96) and the
Oriental Buildings (1893), and the Standard Life Assurance Building in Calcutta (1893-1896).
Figure 19. Victoria Terminus, Bombay, 1878-87. Architect, F.W. Stevens. (Photo: D. Iles)
Major Charles Mant (1840-1881) “a born genius”

Interestingly it was in ‘gothic’ Bombay that the engineer who first mastered the Indo-Saracenic style
emerged. Mant, who was hailed “a born genius, because…he was not brought up as an architect, but first
as a military and then a civil engineer…”,47 was born in Poona and attended Addiscombe and the Royal
Engineers’ School at Chatham before returning to Bombay in late 1859. As an Assistant Engineer, Mant
worked in the Buildings and Roads Department and designed the High School at Surat (Fig. 20) in
‘Italian gothic style’ in 1866-67.48
Mant empathised with Indian culture, passing advanced examinations in Urdu and Hindi in 1868. This
enabled him to employ and train Indian draughtsmen. His mature schemes were a collaboration between
his general designs, and their architectural details. Kolhapur Town Hall, completed 1872 was also in
gothic, but thereafter he was a pioneer of Indo-Saracenic designs, for example: Bhownuggur Court
House and High school, Kolaire High School and the Rajah of Kohlapur’s memorial at Florence. During
1873-74 Mant was on extended furlough in Europe studying European architecture.
On his return to India in December 1874, and now promoted to Major, he came under the patronage of
Sir Richard Temple, Lieutenant General of Bengal, who admired Indian architecture and the way in
which Mant was incorporating native features in his designs. He was inspired by buildings around Agra,
Ahmedabad’s Jain temples, and buildings he had seen in Gujarat. He was transferred to Bengal on
‘special duties’, and then back to Bombay when Temple became Governor there.
In 1877 he was appointed acting Director of the Bombay School of Art, and Superintendent of the
Antiquarian Remains of India. From early 1875 Mant was entrusted with a succession of significant
architectural commissions across Bengal and beyond – Cooch Behar Palace (1875), Dacca College
(1875), Northbrook Hall, Dacca (1876), Mayo College, Ajmere (1875) (Fig. 21), Baroda Hospital and
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Figure 20. Surat High School, 1867. Engineer/architect, C. Mant. (Image: Professional papers on Indian
engineering, Vol. V, 1868, p.315, ICE Archives)
Figure 21. Mayo College, Ajmere, 1875. Engineer/architect, C. Mant. (Image: Building news, 21
February 1879)
Library (1876), Kolhapur Hospital (1878), the Guicowar of Baroda’s Palace (1880-90), the Rajah of
Kolhapur’s palace, and designs for the Maharaja of Durbhanga’s Palace.
These palaces had enormous budgets, largely reflecting their vast size – the palace at Baroda (Fig. 22)
covers 130,000 square feet and has a west front 520 ft. long. Costing in excess of £180,000, it was
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perhaps the most expensive private building project of the nineteenth century. The external walls were
of brick with sandstone bands and cornices. Mant began with a fireproof design using iron beams and
concrete floors laid on stone slabs or tiles, but the cost of importing iron led him to redesigned the floor
using teak beams. Finally, he reverted to a fireproof solution using iron and concretee. The building was
completed by Chisholm. Kolhapur was smaller-100,000 sq. ft. in area.
Figure 22. Lakshmi Vilas Palace, Baroda, 1881. Original design by engineer/architect, Charles Mant
(Image: Building news, 28 October 1881)
Mant committed suicide on 22 November 1881 burdened by financial problems and insecurity over the
structural soundness of his designs. These stresses and overwork led to temporary insanity, He died
convinced that his Baroda design would fail, although it was subsequently completed with little
modification. Temple noted “I am certain that a more talented, accomplished and conscientious engineer
never existed in India”.49
The reality for both engineers and architects in India trying to develop new projects was, as General
Andrew Clarke recognized,50 the strict financial control exercised by the GOI, which delayed or
economized on all proposals. This, and not the design ability of the PWDs’ civil and military engineers
was the common cause of indifferent works. To reduce costs, the GOI significantly altered Mant’s original
designs for Mayo College, Ajmere, whereas his princely palaces were beyond the bureaucrats’ control.
Madras
If Bombay was the principal home of the Gothic, Madras, regardless of the work of Mant, came to be
the home of the mature Indo-Saracenic style. This attempt to blend the best of British and Indian
(generally Islamic) traditions often resulted in an absurd mélange of styles that, as at Muir College in
Allahabad, was ripe for uninformed criticism. Chisholm and Irwin, its leading exponents in Madras, had
both come to India to work as engineers in the PWD, although Irwin’s background was more
conventional civil engineering.
Robert Fellowes Chisholm (1838-1915)51

Chisholm was the son of a Scottish-born artist and successfully applied for the PWD around 1860. By
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1865 he was officiating Executive Engineer at Patna, capital of Bihar. He led a team that included six
junior engineers. When the Government of Madras held a competition for the design of the Presidency
College and a University Senate House, he entered and won the £300 prize. After negotiation between
the two presidencies, he was transferred to Madras to fulfil the project.
The Madras Governor, Lord Napier, saw in his “clever little cockney” someone who could deliver his
own Imperial vision, regardless of the intentions of the GOI in Calcutta. Thus Chisholm’s early work
embraced a variety of styles that were popular at the time – Italianate at the Presidency College (1867-
70) and the Lawrence Asylum (school) at Ootacamund (1865-71); Scottish Baronial for the PWD
building alongside the Chepauk Palace; Classical for the Madras Club; and ‘Osborne House’ style for the
Prince of Arcot’s palace at Royapettah. The Revenue Board buildings (Fig. 23) at the rear of the Chepauk
Palace in Madras (1870-1) was arguably his first Indo-Saracenic work.
Figure 23. Revenue Board Buildings, Madras, 1870-71. Architect, R.F. Chisholm. (Image: Professional
papers on Indian engineering, Vol. 1, 2nd series, 1872, p 1, ICE Archives)
The Madras government realized the importance of giving Chisholm recognition for his architectural talent,
but the office of the Secretary of State in London was sceptical about the decision to reward Chisholm’s
ability by appointing him as Consulting Architect in 1870. The Secretary of State wrote of him:
I entertain, however, considerable doubt as to the expediency of the new appointment of Consulting
Architect to the Government of Madras. I will not disturb the arrangement which you have made as
regards the present incumbent, but, having regard to the large staff of highly paid engineers now in
the employment of the Government, I do not consider that the separate appointment of Consulting
Architect at Madras is really necessary, and I request that, on the retirement of Mr. Chisholm, the
office may be abolished. 52
This view had mellowed within 2 years, as revealed in a dispatch from the Secretary of State:
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Having regard to the complaints which have been made as to the mode in which public buildings
are constructed in India under the present system.53
It was decided to permit the post to continue.
Chisholm’s appointment was made “in recognition of his high attainments as an architect” and through
his work in Madras he was elected to the RIBA in 1871, and became one of the best-known architects
practising in India. He argued that what he described at the Mussulman style should become the model
for new imperial architecture. However the greatest change in his style came with Napier’s commission
to restore the Tirumalai Nayak Mahal in Madurai where, among other measures, he used wrought-iron
ties to stabilize the dome.54 His respect for that building led him to reconsider his design for the
University Senate House (1874-79), (Fig. 24) incorporating several elements he admired in the Mahal.
He also added elements from buildings that had inspired him in other places such as Bijapur,
Mahabalipuram and Ajanta. The Senate House was a great expression of the new Indo-Saracenic style
with interior decoration by craftsmen from the School of Art. It also had four corner onion domes and
could be described as Byzantine in inspiration.
Figure 24. Madras University, Senate House 1874-79. Architect, R.F. Chisholm (Photo: Eleanor Pearce)
Another example of Chisholm incorporating local details arose when he visited Trivandrum in the
Kingdom of Travancore (in present-day Kerala) where his design for a museum was to be built.55 There
he saw the local style of roofing which included dormer-like openings to ventilate the roof space and
concluded that it was “a very beautiful form of domestic art”, and incorporated them in his General Post
Office in Madras (1875-84). (Fig. 25) Other Chisholm works included the Victoria Public Hall (1887-9),
the tower of the Central Station (1880s) and the main offices of P Orr & Sons (1879) which, together
helped form a great range of buildings along the Esplanade that transformed Madras.
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Figure 25. The General Post Office, Madras, 1875-84. Architect: Robert Chisholm. (Photo: The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/the-madras-gpo-beginnings/
article2583518.ece)
Chisholm’s success at Madras was ultimately overshadowed by financial irregularities, and possibly
because the PWD became concerned about his growing and dominant influence. They refused to give
him the office of Superintending Engineer which, although it would have brought little financial benefit,
would have given him greater recognition within the PWD hierarchy. In 1887 he resigned and whilst
continuing several private commissions in Madras, moved north to Baroda in Gujarat where he
completed Lakshmi Vilas, one of the great Indo-Saracenic projects of Major Mant.56 Other major works
by Chisholm include the Nilgiri Library (c. 1866), New College, Baroda (1881-83)57, the Museum and
Pavilion in Baroda (1889), and the competition design for Bombay Municipal offices (1888). He
returned to Britain in 1902 where his last work was a Church for the Christian Science Movement (now
Cadogan Hall) at Sloane Street, London. His contributions to the transactions of the RIBA reveal a great
empathy towards Indian architecture, and a profound understanding of local building forms, including
the dome. As he remarked at RIBA:
At the expense of his reputation he had discarded style in all his buildings beyond what he could get
out of the natives on the spot; he thought it would be a very good rule to anyone practising in India
to accept the local materials, to do the best he could with local labour, to work on the traditions of
native art. And to observe also the golden rule that the amount of ornamentation put on a building
should not exceed a certain ratio to the value of the materials which exhibited that ornament.58
Henry Irwin (1841-1922)

Henry Irwin had a conventional PWD upbringing on civil engineering works in Sri Lanka and on
irrigation works in Madras before being posted to Nagpur in 1872 where he had increasing responsibility
for building work, including the Mayo Hospital. That experience led to his transfer to Simla where the
growing needs of a summer capital were not reflected in the ramshackle buildings that had been erected
there. Employing a somewhat eclectic variety of styles he designed the Vice Regal Lodge (1888), Army
Headquarters, Public Works Department Secretariat (later Railway Board, 1896-97), Town Hall (1887),
Telegraph Offices (1885), and Roman Catholic Church (1885-1900). Some look like iron-framed
concrete-floored warehouses, others like mock-Tudor mansions. The original Secretariat (1882-84) and
Army Headquarters (1883-85) were founded on lime-concrete piers supporting a vaulted concrete floor,
erected on traditional Indian soil centring, and had iron frames with in situ concrete panels, and concrete
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floors cast on curved corrugated-iron plates. The panels were cast with hollow cores to reduce their
weight.59 Concrete panels were used in the timber framed Post Office (1882-86) and Ripon Hospital
(1885), Most interestingly he designed the Railway Board building for both earthquake and fire
resistance. (Fig. 26) The ironwork in that case was supplied by Richardson and Cruddas at Byculla
Ironworks in Bombay.
Figure 26. Railway Board (formerly Public Works Secretariat), Simla. Engineer/architect, Henry Irwin
(Photo: Jacqueline Banerjee, http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/india/11.html)
Although generally labelled Indo-Saracenic, much of Irwin’s architectural style was embellished gothic;
he appears to have plundered rather than selected his architectural idioms. Following two short-lived
successors he replaced Chisholm as Government Architect for Madras, where he completed the Law
Courts (1882-92), (Fig. 27) and designed the Law College (1892-94), Bank of Madras (1896-99)60,
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Egmore railway station (1902-08)61 and the Empress Victoria Memorial Hall (1909). The Memorial Hall
was built with the same pink sandstone used in the best Muslim architecture, and Irwin based its centre
piece on the gateway to Akbar’s Palace at Fatehpur Sikri. (Fig. 28) It can be regarded as his masterpiece
and is now the National Art Gallery.
Figure 27. Madras Law Courts, 1882-92. Architects, R.F. Chisholm, J.W. Brassington and Henry Irwin
(Image: Indian Engineering, 7 February 1895)
Irwin moved on to princely work and was commissioned by the Maharaja of Mysore to design the
spectacular Amba Vilas Palace (Fig. 29) for which he pillaged styles and details from everywhere.
(Colonel Sir) Samuel Swinton Jacob. (1841-1917)

Swinton Jacob was the other great Indo-Saracenic architect who had influence across the whole sub-
continent. Unlike Chisholm and Irwin, he was a military officer and his early career was typical of an
Addiscombe graduate in the PWD. He did military service in Aden and in 1867 he was seconded to
Jaipur where, in addition to his civil engineering work on the water supply, he became interested in
traditional Indian architecture. He encouraged the skills of local builders and produced a pattern book or
portfolio of ‘Jeypore’ (sic) architectural details for use by the PWD across India.62 His works included
Albert Hall Jaipur (1881-86) (Fig. 30); Jacobabad Jubilee Tower (1887), Churches across Jaipur, St
Stephens College, Delhi (1890), Gorton Castle, Simla (1901-04), and the competition design for the
Bank of Madras (1895), etc.
At the end of his career Jacob was consulted over the design of New Delhi, to Lutyens’ annoyance.
Lutyens felt he had “no architectural ability at all”63 and the Portfolio promoted a pick and mix approach
to architecture that Lutyens abhorred.64 Tastes change.
One of Jacob’s disciples was Major General Sir Sydney D’Aguilar Crookshank (1870-1941), a leading
General in the First World War. As Executive Engineer at Lucknow, during 1908-10, he completed
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Figure 28. Empress Victoria Memorial Hall, Madras 1909, now the National Art Gallery.
Engineer/architect, Henry Irwin. (Photo: Eleanor Pearce)
Figure 29. Amba Vilas Palace at Mysore, 1897-1912. Architect: Henry Irwin. (Photo: B. S. Ananth
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mysore_Palace_Front_view.jpg)
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Figure 30. Albert Hall, Jaipur, 1881-86. Engineer/architect, S.S. Jacob. (Photo: Amit Rawat
https://www.flickr.com/photos/arawatclicks/10735706716 )
Figure 31. Pavilion at the 1911 Durbar for King George V, New Delhi. Engineer/architect, Major
General Sir S. D’A. Crookshank. (Contemporary photograph)
Irwin’s Canning College and Medical School and designed King George’s Medical School and hospital,
the Arabic College, the School of Design, Post Office, and Balrampur Hospital. His success led to his
appointment to design the Indo-Saracenic-style pavilions for the 1911 Durbar at Delhi. (Fig 31)
Punjab
The Irish PWD engineer William Henry Purdon (1823-82) designed a series of buildings following
English gothic and European revivalist models, working closely with the Indian engineer Rai Kanhaiya
Lal (fl. 1830-90) who was the first Indian Graduate of Thomson College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee
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in 1852 and who became Executive Engineer for Lahore. Lal is himself of interest for his use of ‘modern’
methods of structural analysis. Purdon had attended drawing schools at the Royal Dublin Society before
working under the civil engineers C. B. Vignoles, Sir John Rennie and I. K. Brunel. He arrived in the
Punjab in September 1850, shortly after its annexation, and his career developed there over a period of
20 years designing mainly public buildings and several cantonment churches. Purdon retired in 1876
around the time that Kipling was appointed to the local School of Art.
Purdon’s Lawrence and Montgomery Halls in Lahore were designed in classical style (1862, 1866), but
considered by some architectural historians as late anachronisms in a backward province of the empire.
The Italianate design of the Mayo Hospital, Lahore (1870) followed the guidelines of the Government
of India (circular 19, 5. 3. [18]66) regarding buildings for natives. The Civil Buildings in Lahore, with a
principal façade 233 ft. long and two wings, built in brick were, like the Mayo Hospital, Italianate in
style. (Fig. 32)
Figure 32. Civil buildings at Lahore, c.1866. Engineer/architect, W.H. Purdon. (Professional papers on
Indian engineering, Vol. 3, 1874, p. 54, ICE Archives)
The Chief Court at Lahore, completed in 1866, was another early example of what became the
Indo–Saracenic style. (Fig. 33) Its adoption may have been due to Lal’s influence. Purdon spoke of the
Court thus:
The style of architecture is the gothic Arabic of the 14th century, of which style Venice affords some
of the most splendid and best known examples. It is believed that it is especially well fitted for India,
the arcades giving the shade which is indispensable.65
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Figure 33. Design for the Chief Court Lahore, 1866. Engineer/architect W.H. Purdon. (Professional
papers on Indian engineering, Vol. 3, 1874, p. 223, ICE Archives)
By the 1880s Purdon’s Court building had become inadequate and architectural tastes were changing
again. In 1883 John Watts Brassington (c. 1835-1908) won the commission for the new building with a
strongly Islamic style, allegedly influenced by the cathedral/mosque in Cordoba. It was completed in
1889. Brassington had come to India in 1869 as a civil engineer in the PWD to work on railways, but
was transferred to Calcutta to work on buildings there in the early 1870s, and then to Ajmere to supervise
work on Mayo College under Mant.
An era of professional architects 1900-1914
The appointment of architects by the Presidencies and railway companies from mid-century did not result
in British architects flocking to the Indian empire. A handful of British-trained architects undertook the
design of some major public buildings in India, often having first been appointed as engineers in the PWD.
As the Victorian era drew to a close, PWD engineers were still responsible for the design of many routine
and several prestigious buildings across the Raj. Chisholm’s successors as Consulting Architect in Madras
– Lieut. Col. James Law Lushington Morant (1886), Brassington (1886-9), Irwin (1889-96) and George
Steel Travers Harris (1896-97) had all held engineering posts in the PWD before developing their
architectural strengths. Harris was educated at Cooper’s Hill. In Bombay, John Adams had joined the
PWD in 1869, became Architectural Executive Engineer in 1882; he designed the Police Court in Bombay
in 1889 and retired in 1900. Frederick William Stevens, of course had continued to obtain important
commissions up to that time. In Calcutta and Upper India there is little indication of the coherent approach
that can be seen in Madras. One could argue this created a vacuum waiting to be filled.
In contrast to the practice in previous decades, the Church of England began, in the 1880s, to employ
trained architects for their commissions. George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907) who had trained with
Scott, designed extensions to Nagpur Cathedral in the 1880s, and John Oldrid Scott (1841–1913), Scott’s
son, designed Lahore Cathedral (1887). In 1901 the Presidency of Bombay appointed John Begg (1866-
1937) as Consulting Architect. He had trained as an architect in the UK and worked with leaders of the
profession including Alfred Waterhouse. Begg had recent experience of a colonial regime in South Africa
and his new Post Office marked the introduction of Indo-Saracenic influences into gothic Bombay.
In Calcutta further momentous changes were afoot following the appointment of George Nathaniel
(Marquis) Curzon (1859-1925) as Viceroy of India in 1899. Already notorious for his arrogance, his
boundless energy was frequently frustrated by his inability to take heed of the views of others before
acting on his own opinions. Curzon had a strong Imperial vision and wished it to be reflected in the
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Imperial Capital of Calcutta, a vision soon to be encapsulated in the Victoria Memorial Hall (see below).
In India his decision to divide the administration of Bengal caused such political uproar that his work on
the imperial capital was rendered redundant by the decision to create a new capital at Delhi in 1911. His
resignation in 1905 was occasioned by his failing to persuade the home administration of the need to
change the standing of the military member of the Council of India and override the views of Lord
Kitchener.
Curzon had an irrepressible desire to interfere in everything and find incompetence everywhere. His
frustration with the Public Works Department was not confined to its architectural work. When he
established a commission to advise on measures to tackle the awful famine of 1899-1900, he urged
immediate action to initiate famine relief works and investment in irrigation schemes, and found the
PWD obstructive.
The nature of the man can be found in his correspondence with the Secretary of State in London,66
consistent with the view that by the end of the nineteenth century, the aristocracy had a poor view of the
Indian Civil Service and the kind of people who found employment there:67
The Government of India is a mighty and miraculous machine for doing nothing. It is worked by
loyal and hard working men. I have not one word to say against their devotion to duty and industry.
No ray of imagination strikes upon their minds. No spark of initiative springs from their breasts. If
left to themselves, they will instinctively oppose and throttle every reform.68
He was particularly hard on the architectural designs he saw:
I have myself had to draw the plans for two important buildings-the Arts Exhibition Building at
Delhi, and the Punjab Government Circuit House…The plans and drawings sent by the local
engineer- a Native-were enough to make you sob; and the head engineer here (i.e. in Simla)
confessed to me that…he had no idea how to alter them.69
The local engineers being incapable of anything superior to a city-clerk’s suburban residence at
Peckham.70
[I] have spent hours in overhauling the really tragic designs and proposals of our Public Works
engineers.71
The result of his frustration was that, in 1902, Curzon asked the Under-Secretary of State at the India
Office in London, Arthur Godley, to help find him a new Consulting Architect. It proved no easy task
and Godley even advised that the RIBA President himself, William Emerson, should not be considered,
writing: “I understand that the present president, a man called Emerson, is by no means distinguished”,72
adding he was going to ask (Sir) Thomas Graham Jackson RA (1835-1924) for advice. Ironically, Curzon
had already chosen Emerson to design the intended Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta!
Despite this potential disagreement Jackson’s advice was sought and it soon became apparent that few
architects of any talent were prepared to contemplate the potential loss pf prestige and income that
working in India might entail. Curzon’s preference was for a younger man and this prompted the decision
to appoint James Ransome (1865-1944) as Consulting Architect to the Government of India in the
summer of 1902. He set out in October and soon after his arrival and a brief tour of India, he met Curzon,
who took an immediate dislike to him:
I confess to not having been at all impressed with the last man you sent me out from home, namely
Mr. Ransome, the Architect. I sent for him and had a long talk with him about his business, and he
submitted to me a note containing the notes of a tour which he has undertaken since his arrival
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through a good many parts of the country. I must say that it struck me as pretentious trash. He told
me that he saw his way to create a new style in India, which was to be a jumble of everything that
preceded it. I told him that the less he said about new styles, and the fewer novel experiments he
made, the better, that what was wanted was the simplest form of architecture suited to an Indian
climate, and that if he proposed to construct buildings which were to be a mixture of the Hindu,
Saracenic, Classical and Gothic styles, the sooner he abandoned it the better.73
Curzon resolved to get rid of him and Jackson got wind of this. Doubting that it would be possible to
terminate Ransome’s contract legally he noted to the Secretary of State:
Privately I must confess that I doubt whether any architect of originality, who would try to design
in conformity to the local conditions of climate and material and habit, rather than on the precedent
of the familiar European styles, would find acceptance under the regime out there. Mr. Ransome,
from whom I have heard twice, tells me he was instructed to reproduce the University Buildings at,
if I remember, Glasgow. If that is the governmental notion of the best way to build in India, I think
there is little hope of any good work being done out there.74
Jackson’s view was that one should chose a good man and give him his head.
Curzon came up with an alternative account of what had transpired, responding to the India Office that
Ransome had been asked to produce designs for six important buildings, but none of his sketches were
up to scratch. One building in question was the Law Courts in Rangoon, for which, Curzon said,
Ransome had submitted a “rather pretentious Queen Anne Renaissance”75 design whereas what Curzon
wanted was a building in classical style. At that point he showed Ransome an illustration of Glasgow
Municipal Offices. Curzon did not want someone experimenting in order to get it right, but rather
someone to do classical in Calcutta and Saracenic in ‘the north’. In the end lawyers became involved as
Ransome asked for £3000 compensation. Curzon refused to agree to this from a man “whose attitude of
resentment of all criticism and refusal to introduce [the] smallest modifications in his plans renders it
difficult to work with him”.76 Ransome was retained. One can only speculate at the working atmosphere.
By then, of course the plans for the Victoria Memorial Hall were well-advanced, and Curzon was
increasingly occupied with that and planning for the 1911 Durbar in Delhi.
Emerson was able to work with Curzon because he was prepared to accede to many of his requests, while
also persuading Curzon to allow a number of Indian features to be included. However, the Memorial
(Fig. 34) never achieved Curzon’s purpose of setting the tone for a new imperial architecture: his own
weaknesses of character made sure of that. Emerson’s terms for the commission were 6.5% of an
estimated cost of £250000 for the drawings, and 2.5% extra for sculpture, as well as £750 for each visit
to India and a further 6.5% for extras and £500 for contingencies. The GOI were due to find the salary
of the clerk of works and other staff. The choice of Vincent Esch (1876-1950) as the Clerk of Works
proved inspired. Esch had recently come to Calcutta (1898) to work for the Bengal Nagpur Railway, and
had worked on the design of its new Headquarters. He was to develop into one of the finest British
architects in India in the early twentieth century.
The decision to create a new capital city for India, New Delhi, in turn undermined the position of
Ransome’s successor, John Begg, appointed in 1908. Begg was excluded from the planning committee
for the new capital that was established in 1912; he was also unsuccessful in fulfilling his desire to be
the architect of the new town. His own sense of professionalism made it difficult for him to accept how
the brief for the project was developed; he also found it difficult to accept the decisions being made
without voicing his own opinions and subsequently persistently leaked stories against the Committee and
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Figure 34. Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta 1906-21. Architect, W. Emerson. (Photo: D. Iles)
its advisors. Despite these setbacks to the office of consulting architect, the work delivered by Ransome
and Begg vindicated their appointments. Both were masters of a variety of styles. Ransome was perhaps
the finest exponent of the arts and crafts movement in public architecture in India, and both architects
were reasonably successful in developing an Anglo-Indian style to a functional level in the climatic
conditions of south Asia.77 Their Imperial Department of Commerce and Industry, Council House Street,
Calcutta (1909) was a well-functioning office block, and still in use today.
Begg was active in several areas that hitherto would have been the province of the local military
engineer. While acting occasionally as a consultant to Indian railways, he also designed over twenty
churches, the housing and barracks for the new cantonment at Delhi, and he further developed standard
designs for post and telegraph offices, for example at Agra (1912) and Nagpur (1913).
Given Curzon’s views of the architectural competencies of the PWD and the consequent selection of the
UK-based Sir William Emerson to design the Victoria Memorial Hall, it is unsurprising that his
successors also looked to Britain to find an architect for a new imperial capital at New Delhi. Of course
Emerson was an old India hand, with knowledge of the culture and climate. Not so Lutyens, who won
the competition for New Delhi and represented a clear break with the domination of India-based military
and PWD engineers for the design of Indian civil buildings.78
New Delhi
The idea of relocating the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi was not new in 1910, but the political
upheavals that Curzon had occasioned in Bengal made it suddenly seem very attractive, and the new
King, George V, pressed to be able to announce the decision at his Durbar in December 1911. With that
royal imperative, decision-making was rapid. In that same month Sir John Jenkins of the Viceroy’s
Council met the Lieutenant General of the Punjab to discuss who within the GOI staff could serve on the
proposed Town Planning Committee. They settled on the Deputy Commissioner for the Punjab, the
Superintending Engineer of the Jumna Canal, and George Wittet (1878-1926) the Consulting Architect
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to the Government of Bombay. This was something of a last hurrah for the establishment and while they
might have been sound appointments, this did not suggest that the challenge of creating an imperial
capital was being considered with appropriate ambition. Perhaps Begg’s exclusion is the most surprising;
he may have been judged to be too busy. However, as soon at the King had left and Charles Hardinge
(1858-1944), Viceroy of India (1910-16), was able to devote some time to the question it became obvious
he thought little of Jenkins’ proposals and like most of his advisors he wanted to appoint individuals who
would command imperial respect and this meant, for them, turning to Britain.
The announcement of a new capital stirred certain ambitious individuals to agitate for involvement. The
easiest appointment to the Town Planning Committee was the engineering consultant: John Brodie
(1858-1934), a future president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, had been Liverpool City Engineer
since 1898 and was widely recognised for his innovative approach to the planning of the city and its
services. The choice of architect proved more contentious. An individual was required who had sufficient
flair for town planning. Henry Vaughan Lanchester (1863–1953), architect of Methodist Central Hall in
Westminster among many other buildings, and the then editor of The Builder, was favoured by some.
Stanley Davenport Adshead (1868–1946), who had drawing up the masterplan for the development of
Kennington in London, and was then Professor of Civic Design at Liverpool University was also
considered, but regarded as lacking in practical experience. Raymond Unwin (1863-1940) who had
recently prepared the masterplan for Hampstead Garden Suburb, was probably overlooked for political
reasons. Finally, Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944), with the help of several influential friends, was
able to suitably impress Robert Crewe-Milnes, Earl of Crewe, the current Secretary of State for India,
and then Hardinge and secured the architectural appointment. The role of an ‘independent’ advisor was
filled by Captain George Swinton, Chair of the London County Council. Lanchester was later appointed
as a consultant to the Town Planning Committee.
The Triumvirate (Lutyens, Brodie and Swinton) set out in March 1912 and were not impressed with
Bombay when they arrived. It confirmed Lutyens’ view of the poor standard of architecture in India and
of a need to think freshly. By June the Town Planning Committee were agreed on the site and returned
home. Unfortunately Lanchester, who had been kept involved in the project by influential friends, then
made his own report, coming up with some alternatives and some valid criticisms of the original report.
The Town Planning Committee returned and largely confirmed their original findings on the site, but the
precise location for the proposed Viceroy’s House remained a subject of controversy. Curzon and others
challenged the need to move the Viceroy’s House from Calcutta at all.
To help with his decisions on the site and layout for the capital, Hardinge invited Michael Nethersole
(1859-1920) and C.E.V. Goument (1857-1941), two of the Chief Engineers in the PWD, to review all the
reports. They recommended taking further advice from another officer, in the Forestry Branch. Their
advice supported the opinion of Hardinge and Brodie as to the best location for the Government
(Viceroy’s) House.
Controversy then switched to the appointment of architects for individual buildings. The PWD favoured
using competitions, but Hardinge realised, having already spent many hours discussing layouts and
designs with Lutyens, that it would be difficult to get anybody aligned to his own Imperial thinking, and
it would be a waste of competitors’ and his own time to submit uninformed entries. After some
vacillation and political manoeuvring, on 29 January 1913 Lutyens was appointed principal architectural
advisor together with Herbert Baker (1862-1946). Baker, who was well-known to Lutyens and had
experience of designing major public buildings in South Africa, was appointed once it had been
established that Lutyens would work with him, and Samuel Swinton Jacob was appointed to act as
advisor on Indian stylistic issues.
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Figure 35. The Viceroy’s House at New Delhi, 1921-7. Architect, Edwin Lutyens. (Photo: Scott Dexter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Lutyens#/media/File:Rashtrapati_Bhavan_Wide_New_Delhi_Indi
a.jpg)
Lutyens’ masterpiece is the Viceroy’s House. (Fig.35) He also worked on the overall axial plan for the
city. In appointing Lutyens, and in many other important decisions, the Viceroy Lord Hardinge played a
key role. However, Baker’s design for the principal secretariat buildings, modelled in part on Wren’s
design for the Royal Naval College/Hospital at Greenwich, was to prove the source of great friction
between the two great architects. The new capital was eventually inaugurated on 13 February 1931.
The vital role of engineers in planning and constructing New Delhi should not be overlooked. Brodie
impressed Lutyens and was already experienced in planning a major city. (Sir) Thomas Ward (1863-
1944), the great irrigation engineer, advised on drainage and the disposition of residences within the
hexagonal grid pattern. Swinton Jacob was consulted on the architecture. Sydney D’Aguilar
Crookshank, who had been Chief engineer at Delhi 1910-12, and would become Deputy Director
General of Transportation in the Great War, also played a key role working with both Lutyens and the
others on the Imperial Delhi Committee. He was Secretary to the PWD and its successor, the New
Capital Committee, established in 1919 to enable the GOI to have greater financial oversight. Above all,
Hugh Keeling (1865-1955), Chief Engineer at New Delhi 1913-25, and his successor (Sir) Alexander
Rouse (1878-1966) Chief Engineer during 1925-31, managed the relationships with the Indian
contractors, and kept the project on track. Despite Begg being generally excluded from the New Delhi
project, his successor Robert Tor Russell (1888-1972) was to design more buildings than any other
architect in the new capital.
There is much more to say about the new capital and the relationship between Lutyens, his architectural
colleagues, the Government and the PWD establishment in the early twentieth century. However, it is
already evident that the architectural profession had, at the last gasp of the Raj, finally proved itself to
its principal client. By this time the PWD engineers were civil engineers, project managers, technicians
and accountants, but their architectural design skills were now becoming redundant.
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Conclusions
There have been suggestions that Empires seek to use building styles to impose their values on their
domains.79 This was articulated by E.W.C. Sandes, one of the early historians of the Raj in India:
An Empire can nurse no finer ideal than the cohesion of its dominions in cities erected in one style
of architecture recognized throughout the world as the expression of its own imperial ideals. The
encouragement of such an empire pervading style…will tend to annihilate distance and conduce to
an imperial liberty, equality and fraternity.80
At one level the buildings of the Raj represent a tradition that is generally absent in British architecture
and civil engineering – the oeuvre of a corps of state engineers, many of whom shared an educational
experience intended to equip them with the skills to design all nature of engineering works. This was a
situation generally familiar in European countries. Andrew Saint has asked the question “Were engineers
and architects once the same?” and painted a complex picture of the interplay between what have become
regarded as distinct professions over the last 200 years.81 For much of that period, engineers working in
India were obliged to act as architects, and their work can be regarded at times as proof of the concept
of ‘renaissance man’ capable of turning their natural talents to a number of challenges across the built
environment, according to conditions and the demands placed upon them.
In reality, the built environment of the British Raj presents a range of circumstances, reflecting the
abilities and knowledge of the engineers and architects entrusted with design, and the dead hand of the
officials of the governments of India entrusted with the funds. The general complaints of architectural
writers about the work of the engineers was more particularly aimed at those officials entrusted with
funds and was also reflected in the lengthy debates over many of the great irrigation schemes in India
during the same period. The most telling criticisms address the use of inappropriate materials and
building forms for the climate, and general ignorance of India itself. The architecture of the Raj was
largely created by engineers delegated with the task of designing buildings for Empire; some architects
had a certain influence in the later nineteenth century, but most of them were employed within an
engineering hierarchy. The engineers involved were often, nominally, military engineers operating in a
civil capacity. Modern professional definitions are anachronistic in the Raj, and contemporary criticism
of the architectural approach obscured discussion of professional structures.
More needs to be done to identify the more significant structures in India under the Raj, particularly from
an engineering point of view, and the extent to which local availability of materials influenced design
decisions. The impact of failures – either dramatic ones such as some railway bridges and barrack
buildings, or over a longer time such as at St James’s Church Calcutta – are also worth further research:
were designs poor, or were they poorly supervised and executed? The influence of Indian-trained
engineers on buildings constructed beyond the sub-continent is also worthy of investigation – already the
influence on African irrigation practice is well-known through the engineering works of William
Willcocks and F.E. Kanthack in Egypt and South Africa. The personal thoughts of the engineer-architects
are still generally unknown, with the notable exception of Richard Blechynden at the start of the
nineteenth century.82 Locating more diaries and correspondence would help clarify the extent to which
people like Wilkins and Fuller saw themselves as functionaries or architects of Empire.
The Author
Mike Chrimes retired as Director of Engineering Policy and Innovation at the Institution of Civil
Engineers in July 2014, having worked there since 1977. He was Head of the Library and Archive
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Services for 29 years, and remains Vice Chair of the ICE Panel for Historical Engineering Works. He
was awarded an MBE in 2011 for his services to engineering. For nearly 20 years he was Secretary to
the Editorial Board of the ICE’s Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers project. He has edited or
written ten books and a large number of journal and conference papers on the history of engineering, and
is currently researching a history of consulting engineers. He is also pursuing longer-term research into
the work of British and Irish Engineers in the former British Indian Empire. He sees retirement as
enfranchising him.
Contact details: Mike Chrimes, 13 Wellington Avenue, London, E4 6RE. Email: m.chrimes@ntlworld.com
Notes and References
1. M.M. Chrimes, ‘Architectural dilettantes: construction professionals in British India 1600-1910.

Part 1. 1600-1860: The age of the dilettante.’ Construction History, Vol.30 No.2, pp.15-44.
2. The Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in 1818; the Institution of Engineers of Ireland was
established in 1835.
3. M.M. Chrimes, ‘Concrete in foundations’, p. 120, in R.J.M. Sutherland ed., Historic concrete,
London: TTL, 2001.
4. British Library Oriental and African Collections (BL OAC) IOR/ E/4/791, India and Bengal
Despatches, pp.749-751, Despatch of the Ecclesiastical Dept., no. 2, 17 March 1847, enclosed
drawings of recent British churches, mostly in the gothic style, in response to a request from India
of 8 August 1846 for lithographic plans of churches in ‘Elizabethan style of architecture’.
5. Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India. Report and appendix. (2 Vols).
London: HMSO, 1863.
6. Army Sanitary Commission. Sanitary Works for improving Indian stations. London: HMSO, 1864.
C. 8758
7. Record of Moral & material progress, 1872-73, p. 191.
8. ‘Report of’ Special Committee upon the Defects in the new barracks and other buildings at
Allahabad’, (30th November 1870), Gazette of India, (December 3 1870), Supplement, pp.1330-
1342.
9. ‘Report by the Committee on the failure of the new British Infantry Barracks at Sagar,’ Gazette of
India, (November 12 1872), Extra Supplement (pp.1-211). ‘Failure of the New British Infantry
Barracks at Sagar,’ Gazette of India, (7th December 1872).
10. Correspondence between James Abernethy, President of ICE and the Duke of Argyll on Indian
Public Works, London: Spon, 1882.
11. H.M. Wilmott, Portfolio of drawings, 1890; R.I.C. Tillard, Portfolio of drawings, 1902. ICE
archives.
12. The United Provinces came into existence on 3 January 1921 as a result of renaming the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh. It corresponded approximately to the combined regions of the
present-day Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
13. C. P. Clarke, ‘The Examples of Mughal art in the India Museum,’ TRIBA n.s., Vol., 4, 1888, pp.
122-132; C.P. Clarke, ‘Modern Indian art’ Journal Society of Arts. Vol. 38, 1890, pp. 511-527; E.B.
Havell, ‘Art administration in India,’ Journal Royal Society of Arts, Vol 58, 1910, pp. 274-298.
14. Builder, Vol. 22, 23 April 1864, pp. 293-294
15. Builder, Vol. 22, 1864, p. 437
16. Builder, Vol. 17 (4 June and 1 Aug. 1859); Vol. 22, 1864, p. 779; (5 Nov.), p. 815; Vol. 23, 1(21
Oct. 1865) pp. 743-745; (4 Nov. 1865), pp. 777-778; Vol. 31 (10 June 1876), pp. 559-560; similar
discussions are to be found in Engineers journal (Calcutta).
17. BL OAC IOR/V6/ 298, Public works despatch 34, 1870.
137

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18. The Builder, Vol 23, 1865, pp. pp 441-442

19. T.R. Smith, ‘On buildings for European occupation in tropical climates’, TRIBA, 1868, pp. 197-208
20. J. Fergusson, ‘On the study of Indian architecture,’ Journal Society of Arts, Vol. 15, 1866, pp 70-
80
21. P. Clarke, ‘Modern Indian art’, Journal Society of Arts, vol. 38, 1890, pp. 511-527
22. T.R. Metcalf, An Imperial vision: Indian architecture and Britain’s Raj. London: Faber & Faber,
1989, p. 228, quoting from a letter written to his wife in 1912.
23. R.G. Irving, Indian summer-Lutyens, Baker and Imperial India, New Haven: Yale UP, 1981, p. 170
24. Ibid., p. 80
25. Ibid., p. 42
26. BL OAC IOR/L/AG/46/10/5 Eastern Bengal Railway Minute Book no. 2, 12 October 1858
27. G. Ham, Illustrated handbook of the Eastern Bengal Railway, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.,
1862. p. 4
28. E. Davidson, The railways of India, London: Spon, 1868. p. 219.
29. J. Fergusson, The Illustrated handbook of architecture, London: Murray, 1855. 2 vols
30. St James’s church had been built c. 1815-1822 but, like many churches in India, was still
incomplete in the early 1850s (BL OAC IOR/E/4/810, pp 177-181, 4 June 1851). It was then
condemned in 1858 due to white ant attacks on the structural timbers and a decision was made to
build a replacement church on a new site. The designer of the original is unclear.
31. Record of Moral & material progress,1861-62
32. Frederick Ransome invented his artificial sandstone in 1844. Using sand and powdered flint in an
alkaline solution, the siliceous particles were bound together by heating in an enclosed high-
temperature steam boiler. With properties similar to natural stone, it could be moulded or carved
and found applications as tombstones, decorative architectural work and grindstones.
33. BL OAC IOR/L/PWD/3/16, No 128, 16 sept 1869, referred to (largely unsuccessful) investigations
of Lt. Col. Felix Thackeray Haig into the manufacture of artificial stone by Ransome’s patent
process in the Central Provinces, and a ‘European’ tour by other military officers, led by James
Crofton, to visit concrete factories in Marseilles, Port Said and Suez. The tenor of the dispatch
suggests that the intention was to import rather than manufacture artificial stone.
34. J. Fergusson, ref 13.
35. A. Welch, and others, ‘Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne’. RACAR/Canadian Art
Review, vol. 34, 2, 2009, pp. 74-86.
36. Bombay Builder, Editorial, August 4 1865
37. The Builder, Vol. 23 (18 February 1865), pp. 118-119
38. The Builder, Vol. 33 (6 March 1875), p. 207; p. 211
39. BL OAC L/PWD/3/370, No 69, 1st June 1870, Reports relating to new post office in Bombay from
Col. M. K Kennedy, enclosing drawings, signed Walter Paris ‘architect to govt’. The work must
have been carried out by PWD engineers as Paris left India that year.
40. R. Butler, George Gilbert Scott and colonial architecture in India, 1864-1878, Victorian Society
Lecture, at Art Workers Guild, http://www.academia.edu/3524848/Exporting_Gothic_
George_Gilbert_Scott_and_colonial_ architecture_in_India_1864-1878, accessed 22 April 2015;
The Builder, Vol. 36, (1 January 1876), p.10, p.13, illustrates the hall
41. The Builder, Vol. 35, (6 October 1877), pp. 1007-1008; 1010
42. J. Clarke, ‘Like a huge birdcage exhaled from the earth: Watson’s Esplanade Hotel, Mumbai (1867-
71), and its place in structural history’. Construction history, vol. 18, 2002, pp. 37-77.
43. A. Foster, The Victoria and Albert Museum Bombay: a study in aspiration, cooperation and
enervation. South asianist. http://www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk/article/view/257 last viewed15 May
2015
44. Bombay Builder, Vol. 3, 1867-68, passim
138

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45. Builder, Vol. 27, 1869, p. 857

46. T.R. Smith, ‘Architectural art in India’, Journal Society of Arts, Vol. 21, 7 March 1873, pp 286-287
47. Sir Richard Temple, in T. H. Lewis, ‘The Late Major Mant,’ TRIBA, 1881, pp. 100-112.
48. C. Mant, ‘Surat High school,’ Prof Papers Indian Engineering, Vol. 5, 1868, pp. 315-6.
49. TRIBA, 1881, ref 43 above.
50. T. H. Lewis, ‘The Late Major Mant’ TRIBA. Vol. 31, 1881, pp. 100-112.
51. Anon. ‘Robert Fellowes Chisholm,’ TRIBA, Vol. 22, 1912, p. 427
52. BL OAC, IOR V/6/298, Financial dispatch to India 405, 15 December 1870
53. BL OAC, IOR V/6/300, Financial dispatch to Madras 19, 1872, p. 44
54. R.F. Chisholm, ‘Tiroom Naik’s Palace’ TRIBA, Vol. 26. 1876, pp. 159-178
55. R.F. Chisholm, The Napier Museum Trivandrum, Madras: GOI, 1872.
56. R.F. Chisholm, ‘Baroda Palace’, TRIBA, 3rd series, Vol. 3, 1896, pp. 421-433; pp. 445-449.
57. R.F. Chisholm, ‘A New college for the Gaekwar of Baroda, with notes on style and domical
construction in India’, TRIBA, Vol. 33, 1883, pp. 141-146.
58. J. Ransome, ‘European architecture in India’, TRIBA, 3rd series, vol. XII, 1905, 6, p. 185.
59. W. Smith, ‘Concrete-buildings at Simla’, Min. Procs. ICE, Vol. 83, 1886, pp. 390-400.
60. Indian engineering, (4 April 1896), pp. 216-217; (4 Feb. 1899), pp. 75-76
61. Indian engineering, (11 Jan. 1902), p. 28; (18 Jan. 1902), p. 37; (18 July 1908), p. 46.
62. S.S. Jacob, Jeypore portfolio of architectural details, London: GOI, 1890.
63. T.R. Metcalf, An Imperial vision: Indian architecture and Britain’s Raj, London: Faber & Faber,
1989, p. 229
64. R.G. Irving, Indian summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi, New Haven: Yale UP, 1981, p. 98
65. R.K. Lal, ‘Civil buildings, Lahore’; ‘Chief court at Lahore’, Prof. Papers Indian Engineering, 2nd
series, vol. 3, 1874, p. 54; pp. 223-236.
66. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111, 1901-1903.
67. D. Cannadine, The Decline and fall of the British aristocracy, London: Picador, 1992, pp. 423-429
68. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/161, correspondence from Curzon, 12, 6 Feb. 1902
69. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/161, correspondence from Curzon, 42, 28 May 1902
70. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/161, correspondence from Curzon, 37, 14 May 1902
71. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/161, correspondence from Curzon 12, 6 Feb. 1902
72. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/161, correspondence to Curzon, 37, 1902
73. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/162, correspondence from Curzon, 13, 1903
74. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/162, correspondence to Curzon, 72, 1903, p. 277, reproduces letter
from T G Jackson
75. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/162, correspondence from Curzon, 86, 11 November 1903
76. BL OAC, IOR MSS/Eur/f 111/173, Telegraphic correspondence from Curzon, 1903, 506, 29
December 1903.
77. J. Ransome, ‘European architecture in India’, TRIBA, 3rd series, vol. XII, 1905, 6, p. 185.
78. R.G. Irving, Indian summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi, New Haven: Yale UP, 1981.
79. T.R. Metcalf, An Imperial vision: Indian architecture and Britain’s Raj, London: Faber & Faber,
1989.
80. E.W.C. Sandes, The Military engineer in India, vol. 2, Chatham: InstRE., 1935, p. 99.
81. Andrew Saint, Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry. London: Yale University Press,
2008.
82. P. Robb, Sentiment and self: Richard Blechynden’s diaries, 1791-1822. New Delhi: OUP, 2012. See
also Chrimes 2015 (see note 1) pp.21-22
139

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182.176.163.138 on Mon, 20 Apr 2020 01:39:42 UTC

Architectural Dilettantes-Construction Professionals in British India 1600-1910. Part 2 PDF

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Architectural dilettantes: construction professionals in British India

Michael Mark Chrimes

Professions, civil engineers, architects, architecture, education, British India, 1860-1910

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The impact of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58

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Figure 4. Garden Houses at Ootacamund, c.1870. Engineer/architect, J. L. L. Morant. These buildings

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Education and training

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Architects and engineers 1860-1900

We certainly surpassed ourselves in India and succeeded in inventing a style of building

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Calcutta, Bengal and Upper India

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Frederick William Stevens (1847-1900)

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Major Charles Mant (1840-1881) “a born genius”

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Robert Fellowes Chisholm (1838-1915)51

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It was decided to permit the post to continue.

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Henry Irwin (1841-1922)

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(Colonel Sir) Samuel Swinton Jacob. (1841-1917)

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An era of professional architects 1900-1914

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He was particularly hard on the architectural designs he saw:

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Notes and References

1. M.M. Chrimes, ‘Architectural dilettantes: construction professionals in British India 1600-1910.

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