Everything about Bombay Castle totally explained
Bombay Castle is one of the oldest defensive structures built in the city of
Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The current castle is a structure built by the
British on the site of a manor built by a
Portuguese nobleman
Garcia de Orta. Orta had leased the island of Bombay from the
King of Portugal between 1554 and 1570.
The castle was built of local blue Kurla stone and red
laterite stone from the
Konkan region to the south. In 1662, after the islands came under the hands of the British, the
British East India Company took possession of the castle in 1665. Over the next ten years, they built a defensive structure around the manor. Around the same time, a wall was being built around a new urban centre. The wall was later demolished in 1865 after the city grew rapidly. Fragments of this wall however still exist in some areas.
Few records of the original Portuguese castle remain and historians are trying to piece together the original location of the manor. Two gates of the manor are located within
INS Angre, a
naval station in
South Mumbai. A
sundial thought to date back to the Portuguese era is also present. This sundial doesn't mark out the 12 hours of a day, but marks out certain periods which are deemed to be important to people of those days.
The main building within this castle is the Governor's House in which
Gerald Aungier, the first
Governor of Bombay used to stay. The residence was later moved to
Parel and then to
Malabar Hill over the next two centuries. The current building houses the offices of the Flag Officer Commander-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command.
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