India Guide
Uttar Pradesh
The Residency
Address: Southeast of Hardinge Bridge in the west of Lucknow
Price: Rs100, video cameras Rs25; museum Rs5
Opening time: Daily sunrise to sunset, museum Tues– Sun 9am–4.30pm
Lucknow's blasted Residency rests in peace amid landscaped gardens – a battle-scarred ruin left exactly as it stood when the siege by insurgent sepoys, which started on June 30, 1857, was finally relieved by Sir Colin Campbell on November 17. Its cannonball-shattered tower became a shrine to the tenacity of the British in India, and continued to be maintained as such even after Independence.
During the siege, every building in the complex was utilized for the hard-fought defence of the compound. The Treasury, on the right through the Baillie Guard Gate, served as an arsenal, while the sumptuous Banqueting Hall, immediately west, was a makeshift hospital, and the extensive single-storey Dr Fayrer's House, just south, housed women and children. Most of the original structures, such as Begum Kothi, were left standing to impede direct fire from the enemy. On the lawn outside Begum Kothi, a large cross honours the astute Sir Henry Lawrence, responsible for building its defences, who died shortly after hostilities began.
The pockmarked Residency itself holds a small museum. On the ground floor, the Model Room, the only one with its roof intact, houses a large model of the defences and of the Residency and a small but excellent collection of images, including etchings showing wall breaches blocked up with billiard tables and a soldier blacking up in preparation for a dash across enemy lines.