Colonial Architecture in India

The key focus of this lecture is on Bombay in the days of the Raj, in the second half of the 19th century.  In these decades of plenty this port became known as ‘The Gateway of India’. This economic boom-time coincided with the mid-Victorian enthusiasm for the Gothic Revival style and in Bombay were constructed the most extraordinarily impressive collection of civic buildings.  Careful study is made of this, the finest collection of Gothic Revival buildings in the world, and brief mention is made too, of some of the city’s many splendid Art Deco buildings.

Anthony Peers is a freelance historic buildings consultant, educated as an Architectural Historian at Manchester University and trained in building conservation at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York. In the mid-1990s he was employed by the DTI in Bombay, India, setting up and running an innovative project to repair George Gilbert Scott’s university buildings and to provide training in conservation techniques and philosophy.