Home UpKandy: British Institutions

Call it "soft" infrastructure, but the institutions of government were as durable—more durable—than tracks and asphalt.

Town Hall.

A closeup of the Kandy coat-of-arms. It says something about the effects of a long-running civil war that a camera pointed at what should be a symbol of civic pride triggers immediate police intervention: "no photo."

The High Court building of 1887—retired in 2005 and replaced by a big new building very inconveniently located half way to Peradeniya.

After hours: nobody around except (to the right of the camera) a chained line of prisoners.

Interior of high court.

Magistrate's court.

District court.

The judge's view in the same district court. The "room" closely follows the form of the Kandyan magulmaduva, or council chamber: heavy tiled roof, carved columns, no walls in this ever-warm climate.

You can date the Sinhalization of the judicial system from this list.

Across the street from the courts: barrister's offices.

Shingles galore.

Plenty of room for more.

Enter the building and there are courtyards plastered with more shingles.

Next door: the remand prison.

Adjacent to the railway station (a modern structure, replacing the colonial one) is the old railroad hotel.

Many years ago, it was taken over for use as the town's post office.

It's still used by the postal service for sorting, but public services have been shifted to a newer building..

Another echo of the* magulmaduva* or royal council chamber. This is the chapel of Trinity College, established as an Anglican missionary school in 1872 and still going strong.

The chapel was completed in 1935, though it originally had a metal roof. The design was by the school's vice principal, Reverend Gaster.

The gateway to another British school, Kingswood College, established by Louis Edmund Blaze, who had taught at Trinity College, been disillusioned by its strict discipline, and after stints in Calcutta and Lahore returned to Kandy to open his own school—Boy's School—in 1891. Short of funds, he turned it over to the Methodist Church, but in 1897 it became a government-supported school. A year later it took the name Kingswood College, and in 1925 it moved to its present location, midway between Kandy and Peradeniya.

One of the first Kingswood College buildings.

Once located on the esplanade, this statue now lies behind the strictly guarded gates of a military area.

The figure comes from the Boer War and shows a member of the Ceylon Planters' Rifle Corps.