Peter Boon, who handed over the role of BACSA Secretary to Stephen Schaw Miller last year, has sent us this progress report on the BACSA Signs initiative announced at the 2025 AGM:
‘A BACSA sign was recently placed at the gate to the Anglican Cemetery, Christ Church, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India.
It shows that BACSA has supported conservation at the cemetery and is part of the initiative announced at BACSA’s Annual General Meeting in March 2025. The programme aims to have signs mounted at more than 20 historic cemeteries, mostly in India, that have received BACSA support in recent years.
Some burial grounds in the Indian Subcontinent display signs stating that they have received BACSA support, but the Association itself has not provided its own sign up till now. It needed to demonstrate publicly its support that helps to sustain the Subcontinent’s built heritage and history. The signs will also raise BACSA’s profile in the conservation community and more widely. Made of acrylic material and weather-resistant, the sign is made by the Delhi company that supplies the Commonwealth War Graves Commission signs.
BACSA first supported Salem’s cemetery in 2008 and makes an annual grant towards the cemetery’s maintenance. As part of Christ Church’s 150th anniversary in 2025, the Church and the Salem Historical Society embarked on a comprehensive conservation project to include strengthening the boundary wall, erecting a new main gate, and attending to all the graves. BACSA will contribute £6,800 towards the costs.
Dating from the 1790s, the cemetery covers an area of 6,203 sq yds/5,186 sq m. It contains 131 graves that typically reflect the lives and deaths of those in East India Company service and their families, missionaries and merchants.
(Photo: SHS, 2009)
A fine obelisk tomb is that of Lieut Colonel Oloff Fehrszen who died of cholera in 1820. An officer in HM’s 53rd Foot, he had fought in the Peninsular War and guarded Napoleon on St Helena. A family tragedy was that of Captain Henry Bevan of the 27th Native Regiment Infantry: his wife Mary Ann and daughters Emma, Julia and Adel were victims of cholera within the space of three days in 1837. A grief-stricken Captain Bevan left for England. The Revd Henry Crisp who died in 1831 having been the London Mission Society’s first missionary in Salem, joined his wife Eliza who had died in 1829. Crisp was succeeded by the Revd George Walton who died in 1841 following his wife Anna, 1838. She was mother to eight children.
Click here to see details of BACSA’s illustrated book The Old Anglican Cemetery, Salem Tamil Nadu, by Denise Love, which includes an introduction to the history and restoration of the Cemetery, the history of the British Settlement of Salem, and detailed, researched histories of the individuals buried in the conserved graves.
Other cemeteries receiving signs include the Cantonment Cemetery, Ambala; Jhansi Cantonment Cemetery; Cemetery No 2 , Lansdowne; Lovedale Cemetery, The Nilgiris; St James’s Churchyard, Delhi’.
Peter Boon
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Ed. note: Click here to see the BACSA Newsletter article published on 18/4/25, covering earlier BACSA projects at Salem, and the church’s proposed September 2025 sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary events.
Rachel Magowan
(Suggestions for BACSA website news items, volunteering opportunities and diary entries, are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)