Chettinad mansions

The Chettinad was the home to the Chettiars, originallly mercantile traders in salt in the seventeenth century, according to a Unesco-sponsored book about the area. However, in the late nineteenth century, the (Chettiar-sponsored) myth developed that they originated as a group in 2898 BCE somewhere else, migrated to the coast and lived there until 790 BCE and finally made it to this area from 707 AD.

Origin myths aside, it does seem the case that that in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century, they gained control of much of the pearl trade in the Gulf of Mannar (where we were last week). They also developed a system for lending money to farmers, political and military leaders.

Once the British had colonised Burma and Malaya, the Chettiars became involved in servicing the credit needs of people from Ceylon, Burma and Malaya who were developing commodities for the European export market. They grew rich on the loans they made, particularly in Burma, with one estimate that there were 1,650 Chettiar offices in Burma by 1930.

Using this wealth, during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, they built some 20,000 mansions across 73 villages and two towns in the Chettinad.

But in 1942, when Japan invaded Burma, their involvement in the country ended abruptly.

Many of the mansions still exist, though for the most part in pretty rotten condition:

They are absolutely enormous and built of the finest materials: teak from Burma, glass from Belgium, marble from Italy, cast iron from Britain, tiles made locally by hand or imported from Spain and so on. According to the Unesco book, every aspect was designed to show off the wealth of the owner.

They face on to the street and then stretch back and back with sun courtyards, moon courtyards and dozens of rooms. Each mansion was intended to house a joint family – multiple nuclear families related through the paternal line – so each family required its own rooms.

This means that a still-standing mansion may be shared by many descendants and, if they can’t agree on what to do with it, they fall into disrepair. Hence the loss of so many.

But where there is agreement, some are being restored to live in while others have been opened up for visitors who are charged a small fee.The restored ones are pretty startling in terms of colour and embellishments:

Most of these photos were taken yesterday when it was sunny. Today, it’s running but, always in pursuit of the perfect photo, we went on to the roof of one (bear in mind that we had to take our shoes off before entering so we were standing on a slippy, decrepit surface in bare feet) and came away with this which shows the contrast between restored and original: