A few majestic mango trees still remain in the compound of the garden house of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of Bengal Presidency from 1772 to 1785. It’s located in the heart of Barasat, about 30 km from Kolkata. With an imposing arched portico in the front and dozens of columns on the first floor, the impressive double storey house represents a fine specimen of colonial architecture prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries. The front wall of the building has a stone tablet with the words: “In this house lived Lord Warren Hastings”.
“The Warren Hastings House was declared a Monument of National Importance by the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) in June 2005. This is a very fine specimen of colonial architecture and we took it from the West Bengal Government, which was using it for administrative purposes,” said Subha Majumder, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI Kolkata Circle.
Dr. Majumder said that while most British colonial structures are situated in Kolkata, the Warren Hastings House is among the few seen outside the State capital. “If you look at the house, you find large open windows, several door porticos and a lot of open space, which was meant for air circulation. Therefore, this house was not built to be used for administrative purposes but for leisure,” he said.
When the ASI took over the structure, the house was in a dilapidated state. The rooms inside the frontal opening at the ground floor were in a badly ruinous state as the wooden ceiling had almost collapsed in many places. While the restoration has been taken up earlier, nearly two dozen workers have been trying to restore the house to its original glory for the past one year. Restoration is being carried out by using lime, sand and other organic materials, a traditional approach used for the conservation of old heritage structures. There are no records, but the manner in which government warehouses and old unused government establishments have come up around the house clearly suggests that the garden area of the house has diminished over the past three centuries.
Warren Hastings built several houses and properties in Kolkata, including the most famous Belvedere House in Alipore, which later became the official residence of Lieutenant-Governors. Located inside the campus of the National Library, Hasting House was recently restored and is now one of the city’s important cultural centres that occasionally hosts art exhibitions. Not far from the Belvedere House on Judges Court Road is Hasting House, another property commissioned by Warren Hastings that serves as the Institute of Education for Women. Among the other structures that can be attributed to Warren Hastings are St. John’s Cathedral, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the Calcutta Madrasah.
Dr. Majumder said that along with the structures in Kolkata, the ASI is trying to restore and highlight the colonial heritage along the banks of the Hooghly in towns like Chandannagar, Chinsurah and Serampore, which were French, Dutch and Danish colonial settlements.
While the garden house of Warren Hastings may open to the public by early 2023, the ASI also has plans of restoring another important heritage structure used as the residence for the first British administrator of Bengal. The attempts to restore a protected monument located at Dum Dum in the northern fringes of the city that served as a country residence for Robert Clive after the 1757 Battle of Plassey has not been fructified so far because of illegal encroachment.
