UNESCO World Heritage Site:

Call of Galle

Jayanthi LIYANAGE

The Fort of Galle is the only living town within a fort in Sri Lanka in which people live within its ramparts. It was built during the Dutch occupation of maritime provinces in Ceylon (1658 AD - 1796 AD) on behalf of Holland as executed by the Dutch East Indian Company (Vereenidge Oost-Indische Compagnie - VOC), a commercial company which had the right to maintain armies, build forts, plant colonies, to make war or peace, arrange treaties or coin money, informs the book "The Sinhalese have met the modernists" written by Susan W. Gunasekera.

The Fort of Galle was built on the orders of the Viceroy Mathias de Albuquerque in the year 1589 where the Dutch Black (Zwarts) bastion now stands and used as Police quarters, narrates Percy Colin-Thome in his memoir to E.F.C. Ludowyk's book "Those Long Afternoons - childhood in colonial Ceylon." The popular derivation of the name Galle is from the Sinhalese gala, a rock, says Colin Thome. "Magalle is a contracted form of maha-gala, the big rock. Another derivation is gaala, a cattle pen. The old cattle pen of Rawana is supposed to have been the Victoria Park. It was called Pattiawela and Pattiapalama is the name of the bridge close to the Railway Station. The Portuguese struck by the similarity in the sound of the word gala with their word gallo (gallus, a cock), seemed to have connected the word with the bird, and the Dutch, who succeeded them in the middle of the 17th century, kept up the idea by adopting the cock as a charge on the arms which they assigned to the town."

The arms depict a cock standing on a rock. The building in Galle which used to be the Dutch Commandeur's Residence has the symbol of Galle, the cock, carved on its front door post.

The Daily News sought the memories of Deloraine Brohier, former President of the Dutch Burgher Union and former President of Sri Lanka - Netherlands Association, who lived in Galle, to unearth historical facts about the Fort. She is the daughter of the late Dr. R.L. Brohier who worked in the Surveyors' Department and authored books "Seeing Ceylon" (1965) and "Discovering Ceylon" (1973). In 2002, she was conferred the honour of the Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau, bestowed on the occasion of the official birthday of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix.

Seeing Ceylon

"During Portuguese rule, they had only a small fort which overlooked the harbour," said Ms. Brohier, consulting her father's book "Seeing Ceylon". "It was just a battlement and a few churches and monasteries in the interior. What you see today is what was built by the Dutch who were engineers and builders. They built more solidly because architectural designs and military skills had advanced by the time the Dutch came." From the esplanade, the sun, moon and star bastions forming the front line of the line of defences can be seen. A bastion is a point of the defences from which the rulers could defend in the event of being attacked.

"Whereas history holds that the Portuguese discovered what came to be called Point-de-Galle, the credit must go to the Dutch for having made it. They decidedly gave the town a character which the fret and wear of 160 years have barely touched, and the good sense of the people who followed them has let alone," states "Seeing Ceylon".

"The Dutch being commercial-minded traders and business people took the fringe of Ceylon which was maritime provinces and they did not occupy the whole of Ceylon, unlike the British," explains Ms. Brohier. To guard the island from the French and the British seeking settlements in Asia, they ringed the walled town of Galle with ten bastions.

Ludowyk writes that five landmarks crowned the Fort: clock tower, flagstaff, windmill, lighthouse and the bastion of the Police station. The clock tower had been built by a Sinhalese philanthropist in memory of Dr.P.D.A. Anthonisz, a well-known Burgher doctor who was the Principal of the Medical College and a member of the Executive Council.

"Seeing Ceylon" also recalls that during the governance of Governor Frederick North in 1800, a design was formed to destroy all the fortifications of the Fort except the bastions which immediately guard the entrance into the harbour. But happily, this was not done other than to clear a distance of 700 yards on the land side of the ramparts on the orders of Governor North. Later, the preservation of the Galle ramparts became a governmental concern and the Fort was proclaimed an Archaeological Reserve.

"In early British times, Colombo did not have a harbour and Galle harbour was the hub of sailing ships. The ships coming round the Cape of Good Hope would naturally stop at Galle.

Trade

The Chinese ships would stop at the watering point in Roomassala, the hill opposite the Fort," says Ms. Brohier. Traders and sight seers from different parts of Europe, Australia, India and the Far East patronised the shops of Sinhala and Muslim vendors of delicate embroideries, Galle lace, silver ornaments, precious stones, tortoise shell, ebony and ivory. Those days, passengers paid in gold. "When mechanised ships came, they found a band of rocks across the entrance to the harbour. During the British period, Colombo developed as an administration head quarters from which roads and railways radiated and an artificial harbour was built in Colombo. Galle harbour faded out of popularity and Galle became the sleepy town it is today."

"Seeing Ceylon" points out that the distinctive character which the Dutch engineers bestowed on Galle has not changed much. "The roads are straight and narrow. From above, they lie like dusty rulers forming a grid in a flat landscape reclaimed from the sea. Some of them carry quaint old world names such as Leyn-Baan Street (rope walk), Great and Small Moderabaay Streets (mud-bay) and Lighthouse Street which had an older name, Zeeburg Street." In the old houses of Galle, a variety of fan lights and ornamental lintels over window or door ways indicate how the Dutch craftsmen dispelled the sameness of the domestic architecture of the period. The dominant architectural feature they used in large buildings was the gable.

The windmill was part of a water-borne sewage system in town planning which was considered extraordinary.

The greater part of the walled town being below the level of the sea, the Dutch colonial engineer harnessed the tide at its ebb to carry its refuse away. "Little was known of the vast network of brick-lined drains which lay from six to twelve feet below normal ground level until an epidemic of bubonic plague in 1922, compelled attempts to segregate and exterminate the enormous rat population in the sewers," states "Seeing Ceylon". "The sewers, despite decay, together with auxiliary honeycomb of house connections, function to this day, to carry off water used for domestic purposes. The tide continues to run in and out."

Religion

"The Dutch was very conscious of health and maintenance of the cities, flushing of drains and collection of garbage," says Ms. Brohier.

A Protestant Church, known as Groote Kerk church, a Dutch Reformed Church, had been built in Galle, on the site of the Capuchin Convent of Portuguese times. Nearly 200 years old, it is today superseded by the Christian Reformed Church. "The Dutch were Calvinists and very democratic in their outlook in church worship."

The New Oriental Hotel owned by a Burgher family named Ephraums, coming from Amsterdam, has now been bought by a foreign hotelier and turned into a luxury hotel known as Amangalla.

The premises was the barracks of British Officers which Ephraums converted into a hotel after purchasing it. The esplanade of Galle, now the venue of an international stadium where the Cricket Match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka is played, is surrounded by relics from its Dutch occupation, providing a stimulating diversion to both the sight seer and the historian.

(Our thanks go to T.H. Nelson de Silva of Department of Archaeology, Galle, who assisted our photojournalist Mahinda Vithanachchi in locating historical sites for photography.)

The popular derivation of the name Galle is from the Sinhalese gala, a rock, says Colin Thome. Magalle is a contracted form of maha-gala, the big rock. Another derivation is gaala, a cattle pen. The old cattle pen of Rawana is supposed to have been the Victoria Park