The Revd Sudhakar Joshua P, who is a Priest (Presbyter) in Karnataka Central Diocese, Church of South India, has sent us a report on some very impressive preliminary conservation activity he recently initiated at an abandoned European cemetery in Mathigiri (‘sometimes spelt Mattagiri’), in Hosur (‘Oossoor’), Tamil Nadu, about 40 km from Bangalore.

Photo: Mr Ravi (Church member)
Located in the sprawling 1,641-acre Mathigiri Cattle Farm at Hosur (formerly ‘Remount Depot’, established by the British in 1824), the Cattle Farm Church, now known as CSI Mathigiri Church, is ‘a wonderful historical monument’ almost two centuries old. A small community of Tamil-speaking villagers from Mathigiri and the neighbourhood continue to worship there.

‘May Their Souls Rest In Peace’
Photo: Revd J Sudhakar
The farm is known to date back to the time of Tipu Sultan; the exact date when the church was built is still being researched.
An information board erected in 1970 tells us that the farm included 46 paddocks, irrigated with water from five tanks. At an altitude of about 3,000’, the average annual rainfall was 84cm; the temperature varied between 15-30ºC.
When Revd Sudhakar first located Mathigiri Cemetery, it was ‘overgrown with bushes, thorns and weeds, making it difficult for one to even enter the place’. With the help of local villagers, he managed to get the vegetation cleared and took photographs of all the tombstones.

Photo: Revd J Sudhakar

clearing Photo: Revd J Sudhakar
The cemetery, which measures approximately 45’ x 120’, and is situated about a furlong from the Church, was opened in 1828 and consecrated by the Bishop (Frederick Gell) on 16th October 1875. It holds around 40 graves of Europeans – who lived on the cattle farm at Mathigiri, worshipped in the church, died, and were buried there between 1828 and 1908.

Photo: Revd J Sudhakar
Many of the older gravestones have no epitaphs, so nothing is known about the people whose last resting place they mark. The earliest legible inscription records the burial of a child named Patrick. The ‘infant son’ of Captain John Hill, A.C. General, 24th Regiment, N.I., Patrick died on 10th June 1843.
The legible tombstone inscriptions indicate that the burials include at least four adult men, seven adult women and about 13 children and infants. Most were British; one is for a German woman, Catharine Frederica, the ‘beloved wife‘ of Sergeant D G Mootham. Catharine, who had been born in Stuttgart, died at ‘Oossoor‘ aged 32, in 1876. Further research into baptism records shows that she died about three weeks after giving birth to a daughter, also named Catharine Frederica.

children of Matilda and Charles
Evers (2nd Apothecary), died of
‘spasmodic cholera’ (1858)
Photo: Revd J Sudhakar
One tombstone inscription poignantly records the burial of two children, Eva Joanna (1 year 11 months) and her brother Edwin Emelius (3 years 5 months), who died in 1858 of spasmodic cholera, leaving their ‘disconsolate parents’, Matilda and Charles Evers (2nd Apothecary) to ‘bemoan their irreparable loss’. Citing Public Health authority and the Colonial State: Cholera in India (an article by J’Nese Williams in the Harvard Library Bulletin), Revd Sudhakar points out that there was an outbreak of spasmodic cholera in the 19th century in parts of South India, which resulted in several deaths in this part of the country.
The tombstone of Samuel Graham, who spent nearly 20 years serving as ‘the respected coachman’ of six successive Governors of Madras, and died at the Remount Depot, aged 52, on 11 September 1872, was erected by his sister Margaret McKie. Curiously, it is the only one mentioned in the ‘Matagiri‘ entry in the 1946 List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras possessing historical or archaeological interest by Julian James Cotton, C.S.
Revd Sudhakar’s research into the Mathigiri church records reveals that prior to the consecration of the cemetery in 1875, Dissenters / Nonconformists were buried outside the cemetery wall, in a separate area bounded by a hedge. That wall was subsequently removed; the boundary was enlarged to include all graves inside a new, extended wall, and a pathway – still visible today – was laid to indicate a separation between the graves of members of the Church of England and the Nonconformists.

Edgar Brandreth (1908)
Photo: Revd J Sudhakar
The last burial at Mathigiri was that of Major Edgar Brandreth, Superintendent of the Hosur Depot of the ARD (Army Remount Department), who died aged 40, on 5 January 1908. Major Brandreth is also commemorated by a brass plaque inside the church, near the altar. The cemetery has not been used since his burial.
While most of the graves appear to be in good condition, Revd Sudhakar reports that in January 2024 ‘some miscreants entered the place and partially destroyed the top portions of the tombstones’. Luckily, however, none of the inscriptions were damaged. Following the initial clear-up, local church members are continuing to maintain the cemetery by ‘regularly de-weeding the ground’.
Finally, Revd Sudhakar mentions that the Cemetery is not being used for any other purposes at present, and is accessible to anyone who wishes to pay a visit.
Revd Sudhakar Joshua P, and Rachel Magowan

Photo: Mr Thomas Krishnan (Cattle Farm employee, and Church member)
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