A graveyard in Dutch days and a market in British times, now awaiting a new destiny
- Pedlar Street
This once was a graveyard. The original boundary wall dating back to 1710 - the year the first soldiers were buried here - is still there.
Fort’s graveyard
Little reminds you today, but this site was a graveyard in the Dutch period. The original boundary wall dating back to 1710 - the year the first soldiers were buried here - is still there. In the days, the settlement was growing and the main graveyard at Church Street was filling up quickly, so they needed a second site to accommodate the departed souls. In 1854 the British relocated the burial site away from the busy commercial street to the more tranquil premises of the Dutch Reformed Church. It was quite a delicate operation to dig up remains the remains of dead bodies and tomb stones and reinstall them in the new site.
A bustling market
The British turned the site into the new municipal market. It was the year 1869 when they built two simple single storey structures for vendors of fresh fruits, vegetables, fish and meat. Later the market moved out of Fort, but the structures are still here, used as quarters for the servants of Galle Municipal Council.
A new hotel?
Recently the Municipal Council leased out the land to an outside investor. The plan is to build a hotel on the site, a sensitive issue as the structures are declared monuments and archaeological surveys unveiled skeletons and tomb stones on the site.