Dust devils spiral and mango trees creak with the weight of history as boys run about the sun-seared grounds. It is late afternoon at St Thomas Mount and outside the 1830-built St Thomas Garrison Church, you can hear the thump of cricket ball on bat. Not long ago, on these grounds adjoining the Mohite stadium — once a battlefield, then an equestrian ground and now a golf course — there were shouts of ‘C’mon boy’ as generations of young Anglo-Indians dribbled their way to hockey glory. The Gothic-styled church located at No: 1 Grand Southern Trunk Road, was built for the spiritual needs of the British soldiers of the Madras Artillery headquartered here in 1774.
Richard O’Connor, Assistant Commissioner, GST, and long-time resident of St Thomas Mount parks his scooter outside the church, helmed in by iron railings said to have been cast from guns captured from Tipu Sultan. “My family has lived in St Thomas Mount for at least a hundred years now, in the last house on the hill. My maternal grandfather was from Middlesex, joined the Army Medical Corps, and served in Ceylon before he was discharged after the War. My paternal great grandfather was Irish,” says Richard, stepping into the church.
