LlTEKARy REGISTEK SUPPLEMENT: 
AND CEYLON 
''NOTES AND QUERIES" 
fUu^er this heading, in future, we mean to give a smill "Supplement " with our Tropic tl A'jricuUv,rist, 
from quarter to quarter, according as there is matter o£ sufficient value so to be preserved.] 
DUTCH ARCHITECTURE IN CEYLON. 
PART I, 
(Frovi Architectural Review for Sept. 1002,) 
In a work published in 1900," Mrs Trot- 
ter gives a number o£ sketches and engrav- 
ings, from photographs of the " Old Colo- 
nial Houses of the Cape of Good Hope," 
with brief descriptions of them, and the 
subject has been treated from a more tech- 
nical point of view in an article published in 
The Architectural Review, bv Mr Arthur 
H Reid (Vol, viii., pp. 147-152 and 220 225) 
which is also illustrated. The article is a 
fitting supplement to the book, and the 
illustrations in both serve to show what 
interesting and picturesque old buildings 
still remain in the Cape Colony as relics 
of the Dutch occupation, which ended in 
the first decade of last century. 
The present writer has been much struck 
with the simil.arity in the appearance and de- 
tails of these buildiners to what he has been 
accustomed to see in the maritime towns of 
Ceylon. The same gables, doorways, win- 
dows, stoeps, garden walls, outside stair- 
cases, the same fort gateways, churches, 
belfries, are to be found in Ceylon as those 
that we find depicted in these illustrations. 
The explanation is that the Dutch East 
India Company that ruled at the Cape for 
a century and a half, also occupied the mari- 
time ports of Ceylon for almost exactly 
the same period, leaving the island only a 
few years before its rule ceased at the Cape. 
So it comes about that even the cover of 
Mrs Trotter's book is suggestive of 
Ceylon, for on it we find the same 
monogram that confronts us from the gate- 
ways of the old Ceylon forts, and on the 
copper coins that are still to be met with 
in the bazaars— not now, however, ful- 
filling their original function, but for sale 
as old metal. It is the monogram of the 
company, and in this same shape cut in 
stone or wood, cast in metal, on cannon, 
swords and bayonets and coins, graved on 
* London. B, T Batsford, publisher, 91, High 
IJolborn, 
glass or painted on Delft, it went wherever 
the company went.* 
The Dutch buildings extant in Ceylon 
are of coarse not so elaborate nor in such 
good preservation as those in the Cape 
Colony, and the inferiority on the part of 
Ceylon is sufficiently explained by its tropi- 
cal climate, with the twofold result of a 
much smaller colonisation by the Dutch 
and a more rapid decay of the buildings, 
X^erhaps also by the use of inferior materials 
of construction. 
There remain, however, sevei^al interest- 
ing old Dutch buildings, especially the 
churches, in regard to which Ceylon would 
appear, if anything, to have the advantage 
over the more important colony ; and it 
seems a pity that some attempt should not 
be made to do for Ceylon what the writers 
referred to above have done for the Cape, 
before modern changes sweep away these 
relics of Dutch rule. The present writer 
nas, during a residence of more than twenty 
years in the island, taken pains to leave 
i.o considerable Dutch building unvisited, as 
well as to provide himself with sketches or 
photographs of most of them, and though not 
an architect, has, in the present paper, 
essayed a task which might otherwise be 
unattempted. 
The last century saw the removal or 
modernization of many old Dutch buildings, 
both by Europeans and natives, especially 
in the Colombo Port and Pettah. In the 
former, the necessities of European trade 
have removed not merely the fort itself, but 
also nearly ev^ery building within it that 
had a distinctly Dutch appearance, and to 
find one now in its streets requires some 
search. The streets of the Dutch quarter of 
a Ceylon townt usually had on each side of 
* By resolution of 2SLli February, 1G03, it was de- 
cided chat the uionograrn should be of the shape 
depicied in Illustration I., \<. lOS, and that the 
letters should be blue on a silver field. 
t This was either within the walls of the fort, as 
at Colombo, Gallo and Matara, or just outside it— 
The Pettah "'—as at Jafifna, Negombo, Kalu- 
tara, etc, 
