St George’s Cemetery, Pallikunnu, Kerala

Denise Love, BACSA Projects Coordinator, reports on additional BACSA support for St George’s Cemetery at Pallikunnu, Peermade, Kerala:

‘St George’s Cemetery, Pallikunnu, is a small site of about thirty graves situated in the hills of Kerala, and reflects the history of the local tea industry. BACSA has in the past given a grant of £3,500 for improving the boundary wall and grave conservation. The active church committee, led by Rev Liju Abraham, has kept the cemetery in good order and recently asked for a contribution towards the costs of cleaning, polishing and painting their graves. Our Executive Committee was impressed by the church’s intention to renovate and develop the cemetery site as a heritage walk so that a significant number of people can visit. The Committee has contributed £850 to the costs the church has already incurred.’

In their 1993 book ‘Above the Heron’s Pool’ Heather Lovatt and Peter de Jong explain the history of the Central Travancore Planting District, including St George’s Church at Pallikunnu and its cemetery. (The book is no longer available through the BACSA website shop, but second-hand copies may be obtained via the internet).

St George’s Church at Pallikunnu was built in 1869 by Rev Henry Baker of the CMS (Church Missionary Society), who selected the site of Mundakayam (‘Heron’s Pool’, described as ‘a glade in the jungle, beside a stream and below a steep scarp of the Western Ghauts’) for a Hill Mission ministering to the residents of the new plantations. A walk from the church site – which is in an area of humid, sub-tropical vegetation – leads up a steep track to a cool grassland plateau, known as Peermade.

Henry’s daughter Henrietta Baker (1851-1909) married her father’s cousin John Daniel (‘JD’) Munro (1833-1895). With two of his wife’s uncles, JD, who lived in ‘bamboo huts put up by the Munnans’, their ‘roofs thatched with lemon grass, the eaves brought down to four feet from the ground as protection from the monsoon gales’, cleared and planted the Hope, Ashley and Stagbrook Estates, before taking on Volong John, and Glenrock.

For each estate this entailed clearing, initially, a small area of undergrowth, ideally by a stream, where a camp surrounded by an elephant trench could be created for huts for the planter and the labourers. Lanes were then driven through the jungle to mark the limits of the clearing, following which the timber inside these boundaries would be felled and burned.

J D Munro was responsible for opening up Peermade – clearing the main path for transporting the coffee and cardamom crops downhill, and cutting a series of bridle paths beyond Ellapara and along the Cheenthalaar valley. The cart road between Kottyam and Peermade was completed in 1872; the stretch across the district to Gudalur by 1885.

Munro died, aged 61, in 1895, and was buried in St George’s Cemetery. There is a memorial to his wife Henrietta, who died in 1909, aged 58, inside the church. Famously, the cemetery also contains a memorial to his white mare ‘Downy’.

The early planters had grown coffee, from plants carried up to Peermade in baskets. The seedlings would ‘come into bearing’ three years later, during which time the planter had to keep the clearing free from the encroaching jungle, build permanent accommodation and cut cart roads.

Following the onset of coffee leaf disease in the 1880s, most Peermade estates were gradually converted to tea production. Unlike coffee, which had needed little capital, and could be prepared for market relatively easily, tea required upfront investment for the factories and machinery needed to prepare the leaves for sale.

In addition, whereas coffee could be harvested by seasonal labour, tea was harvested throughout much of the year, necessitating a larger and more permanent labour force. One impact of this change was that in 1888 the CMS, noting the rapid increase in the Tamil population, engaged Rev M Nallathamby, a Tamil clergyman, as Pastor for St George’s Church.

Rev Nallathamby died, aged 54, in 1901, and was buried in St George’s Cemetery.

BACSA member Charles Lovatt, who visited the area earlier this year, reported that ‘the church, church hall and graveyards have been maintained to a very high standard’. Extracts from the birth, marriage and burial registers, together with a listing of the memorial inscriptions inside the church, are included in ‘Above the Heron’s Pool’.
Both of the church’s cemetery areas were reported as being ‘in excellent condition with good fencing, excellent paths and nothing is overgrown’. The older part, which was in use from 1875-1962, frequently receives visitors who are descendants of the planters buried there. BACSA looks forward to hearing news of the planned heritage walk.

Denise Love and Rachel Magowan

(Suggestions for BACSA website news items are always welcome – please send them to ‘comms@bacsa.org.uk’)