OUTPOSTS
The suburban lands which were successively granted to the Company were
not protected either by the walls of Fort St. George or by the walls
of Black Town, and it was accordingly necessary that special means
should be adopted for their defence. The Company's military engineers
devised the erection of small suburban forts ('redoubts'),
block-houses, and batteries, which were to be mounted with cannon and
to be in charge of an appropriate garrison, and were to serve as
outposts for the protection of the outlying quarters of the city.
On the northern side of Black Town the batteries and block-houses were
linked together by a thick-set hedge of palmyras, bamboos,
prickly-pear, and thorny bushes, such that neither infantry nor
cavalry could force a way through. Later it was decreed that the
'Bound Hedge,' as it was called, should be extended so as to encircle
the whole city. The work, however, was never completed, for as late as
1785 an influential European inhabitant of Madras, addressing the
Government on the subject of the insecurity of the city, wrote:--
"Was the Bound Hedge finished, no man could desert. No Spy
could pass; provisions would be cheap. All the Garden
Houses, as well as thirty-three Square Miles of Ground,
would be in security from the invasions of irregular Horse."
Of the suburban fortifications the two largest were at Egmore and at
San Thome. Next in size were those at Nungumbaukam and at Pursewaukam.
Of smaller works there were many. Of the fortifications at
Nungumbaukam and at Pursewaukam all traces have disappeared; but of
the larger ones at San Thome and at Egmore interesting remains are
still to be seen.
[Illustration: San Thome Fort.
A PORTION OF THE EXTENSIVE RUINS IN THE GROUNDS OF 'LEITH CASTLE,' SAN
THOME]
The remains of the San Thome Redoubt stand within the grounds of
'Leith Castle,' a house that lies south of the San Thome Cathedral.
The remains are ruins, but the massive walls fifteen feet high and
three feet thick, are suggestive of the purpose for which the redoubt
was built. The 'Records' show that the San Thome Redoubt, built in
1751, was a very complete fortification, with a moat forty feet wide,
a glacis, and all the other works that are usual in respect of a well
appointed building of the kind. That it was of a large size is to be
seen in the fact that, when the French under Count Lally were
besieging Madras, an English officer was officially directed 'to stay
in St. Thome Fort with the Europeans belonging to Chingleput, four
Companies of sepoys, and fifty horse.'
The Egmore Redoubt was a good deal older than that of San Thome. It
was constructed in the days of Queen Anne. It was intended, of course,
for the special protection of Egmore; but in those distant days when
trips to the hills were unknown, even Egmore was a health-resort in
respect of the crowded Fort St. George, and it was officially reported
that the Egmore Redoubt might 'serve for a convenience for the sick
Soldiers when arrived from England, for the recovery of their health,
it being a good air.' The Egmore Redoubt was evidently a need; for the
'Records' tell us that on various occasions its guns were fired at the
enemy. The enemy were for the most part horsemen of Haidar Ali or of
Tipu, his son and successor; and in 1799 the year in which Tipu was
killed, the need for the Redoubt disappeared. Adjoining the precincts
of the Redoubt were the premises of the Male Asylum, an Anglo-Indian
Orphanage, which required to be extended, and in the following year
the Madras Government gave the Redoubt to the Asylum, and the two
premises were turned into a common enclosure. In the beginning of the
present century the Directors of the Asylum sold their Egmore estate
to the South Indian Railway Company and removed to new premises in the
Poonamallee road; and what remains of the Egmore Redoubt is now the
habitation of some of the Railway employees.
[Illustration: THE EGMORE FORT (SIDE VIEW)]
The remains are of quaint interest. At some date or another the
authorities of the Asylum had an upper story added to one of the
military buildings, with the result that there is the strange
spectacle of a row of windowed chambers on the top of a buttressed and
battlemented wall, windowless and grim. The upper story has been built
into the battlements in such a manner that the outline of the
battlements is still clearly visible, and the building is a composite
reminder of old-time war and latter-day peace. The whole of the
lower part of the building, with its massive walls and its frowning
aspect, is of curious and suggestive interest; and the ground around,
which is extensively bricked, is a reminder of the fact that the
Redoubt in its original form was large indeed. The place provides
interesting material for antiquarian speculation.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE EGMORE FORT.
_The building is in the Male Asylum Road, and is now the residence of
some railway employees. Its upper part has been built upon a
battlemented wall, and doors have been let into the wall. The outlines
of the original wall and of some of the battlements can be easily
traced._]