Shimla 3, Christ Church
A quick tour of this church and its memorials.
Puff, puff. We're climbing up the ridge. There isn't any easier way.
Christ Church was consecrated in 1857; the tower and clock came a few years later, the porch later still.
The place is locked tight most of the week but open Sunday.
The organ was added in 1899.
The walls are covered with memorial plaques, mostly but not all for military officers.
A doctor, dead from something picked up in the Sudan.
School mistress.
Official.
Official's son.
A general serving over 30 years from the Crimea to Burma.
A captain.
A lieutenant.
Another doctor. Cholera?
A viceroy's wife.
Another general.
A lieutenant-colonel.
Two Kers, the father surviving the son by one year. The father was the longtime owner of Chapslee, a house shown in the previous folder.
Another captain.
A third general.
Two more captains.
A memorial for Cecil Kaye (1868-1939), the father of M.M. Kaye, the author of The Far Pavilions. He is lovingly described in her memoir, The Sun in the Morning (1990).
Adjoining the church is a girl's school.
Explanatory sign.
We're going to slip out to the local cemetery, but first two pictures from the church at nearby Mashobra.
The church itself, in need of some repair.
Buck writes (p. 273) that Simla's main cemetery "is maintained in admirable order." That was then. Now it's just about vanished, though this flight of 90 steps between the cemetery's two levels is still usable.
We're in the cemetery, but you'll have to hunt for gravestones.
A barren monument.
Cemetery bench.