PRINCE OF WALES WATER FOUNTAIN KANDY

Pavilion St, Kandy. This handsome wrought-iron fountain, though completely incompatible to its sacred surroundings lies just outside the entrance to the holiest Singhalese Temple of the Tooth. Cast in a Glasgow iron foundry, it is a wonderful example of high Victorian street furniture. Quite what the passing Buddhist worshippers made of the chubby naked cherubs wrestling with crocodiles, funny-looking fish and herons we can only guess. The fountain was commissioned by the British coffee planters of Ceylon as a show of loyalty to the crown, to commemorate the visit to Kandy in December 1875 by the Prince of Wales (who would later become King Edward VII). Whilst Ceylon tea is now famous around the world, it was coffee which was first cultivated here in the high country around Kandy. It was George Bird who first planted coffee at Sinnapitiya in 1824. From this pioneering plantation, coffee thrived at this elevation and new plantations soon sprung up in the surrounding hills. Over the next four decades, coffee grew to become the dominant export from Ceylon. Given that the clearing of forests and life on the coffee plantations were tasks alien to the native Singhalese, the British chose to import Tamil coolies from southern India to provide a cheap labour force necessary for the coffee industry. The legacy of those Tamil migrants continues to this day as their descendants continue to dominate the labour force of Sri Lanka's tea estates. Coffee was seen as the golden crop and the good times continued until 1869 when almost the country's entire coffee crop was devastated by the blight of the rust-coloured fungus Hemileia vastatrix; within the space of a few months, Ceylon's coffee industry collapsed into oblivion. Fortunes were lost overnight, lives were ruined and planters left the country in droves. It was a huge relief, therefore, for the hard times to be replaced so soon by the planting of a new crop, 'camilla sincesis', commonly known as tea. The inscribed dedication can still be clearly read:- "Erected by the Coffee Planters of Ceylon in Commemoration of the visit of H. R. H. The Prince of Wales to Kandy. December 1875" Given its history as a reminder of Ceylon's once dominant coffee industry, it is a little sad to see this cheerful fountain in such a forlorn-looking state. VISIT http://charithmania.blogspot.com/ Copyright @CharithMania **No publish without owner's prior permission**