Monitoring Desk
NEW DEHLI: An ambitious 20-year conservation project in India has helped repair a more than 200-year-old colonial building.
The restoration of the Telangana Mahila Viswavidyalayam (previously Osmania University College for Women) in Hyderabad, Telangana’s southern state, was finished this month.
Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick lived in the heritage building from 1797 to 1805 while serving as the British representative to the Hyderabad court. The building was eventually transformed into a university.
Throughout the years, the building deteriorated as a result of inadequate maintenance, poor repairs, and excessive local traffic.
India’s building was added to World Monuments Fund (WMF)
The building was added to the World Monuments Fund (WMF) watch list in 2002, and a 20-year restoration effort was started. The non-profit organization supports historic sites that urgently need to be protected. WMF, local and international charities, as well as private benefactors, provided financing for the restoration of various building components in phases.
The final stage of the project, which required repairing three historic gates and the structure’s central hall, was finished in May of last year due to the intervention of the biggest Commonwealth heritage conversation programme in the world.
In addition to providing$193,000 toward the project, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Commonwealth Heritage Skills Training Programme, funded by the UK-based charitable organization Hamish Ogston Foundation, also gave young people from the United Kingdom and Hyderabad the opportunity to work on the building and learn conservation techniques from professionals.
The university was the first of 20 projects that the restoration program has chosen. The restoration of Roxburgh House in Kolkata’s Botanical Gardens will be the next project on the schedule.
The university is a well-known university in Hyderabad. More than 2,500 women are presently studying there annually at the undergraduate, graduate, certificate, and postgraduate levels in a variety of fields.
The restored building will provide the university with greater facilities. On either side of the central mall, green space has been established for recreation, and portions of the college campus that are often frequented by employees and students have been spruced up.
Additionally, a university gate bearing Lieutenant Roberts’ name was restored. Roberts participated in the siege and conquest of Delhi in 1857. While working on the gate, trainees practiced slaking lime, sieving, mixing, and preparing mortar.
The university’s great durbar hall’s papier mache ceiling was being restored by specialists. Small and huge ceiling pieces that had broken off throughout the years and been saved by the government had to be put back together.
We wanted to use every single fragment or piece, thus it was difficult to include them all in the mending and restoration operations, according to Maninder Singh Gill, an art conservator who worked on restoring the ceiling. The structure resembles the White House in the United States and is designed in the manner of a Palladian mansion.
Kirkpatrick had constructed the colonial palace for himself and Khair-un-Nissa, his Indian wife. Based on their romance, William Dalrymple’s 2002 novel White Mughals highlighted how their love at the time crossed all political, religious, and cultural borders.
