Guindy National Park, Valasaravakkam

History

Once covering an area of 5 km2 (1.93 sq mi) of one of the last remnants of tropical dry evergreen forest of the Coromandel Coast, Guindy Park was originally a game reserve. In the early 1670s, a garden space was carved out of the Guindy forest and a residence called the Guindy Lodge was built by Governor William Langhorne (1672–1678), which had helped make St Thomas Mount a salubrious place for rest and recreation. The remaining of the forest area was owned by a British citizen named Gilbert Rodericks from whom it was purchased by the government in 1821 for a sum of ₹ 35,000. The original area of 505 ha was established as a Reserve Forest in 1910. Although it was speculated that Chital (spotted deer) were introduced into the park probably after 1945, it is now known that they already existed in the year 1900 along with other antelope during the tenure of the colonial Governor of Madras Sir Arthur Havelock (1895-1900) Between 1961 and 1977, about 172 ha of the forest, primarily from the Raj Bhavan, was transferred to various government departments in order to build educational institutions and memorials. In 1958, a portion of the forest area was transferred to the Union Education Ministry for establishing the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. In the same year, another portion of the land was transferred to the Forest Department for creating the Guindy Deer Park and Children's Park at the instance of the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. Memorials for Rajaji and Kamaraj were built in 1974 and 1975, respectively, from parcels of land acquired from the Raj Bhavan. In 1977, the forest area was transferred to the Tamil Nadu Forest Department. In 1978, the whole of the remaining area, popularly known then as the Guindy Deer Park, was declared a national park. It was walled off from the adjacent Raj Bhavan and Indian Institute of Technology Madras Campus in the late 1980s.