Overlooked Britain
In Britain we have a sadly small but nevertheless sensational smattering of Eastern architectural conceits and deceits, with all manner of buildings being clad in such fancy dress. Splendours such as Brighton’s Royal Pavilion by John Nash catch you by the throat with delight, as do its stables – now the Dome concert hall and theatre – by William Porden, both of them dating from the early 1800s. Then there is the Mughal finery of Elveden Hall in Suffolk, created by Maharajah Duleep Singh between 1863 and 1870.
What is far less well known is that another Maharajah – of Benares (known as Varanasi today) – was at the same time enhancing the home counties with a fancifully domed and decorated Indian well at Stoke Row, near Henley.
This was charming proof of his working friendship of 34 years with Edward Anderson Reade, Lieutenant Governor of the North Western Provinces. The son of an Oxfordshire squire, he had worked fin India, before, during and after the Mutiny – no easy task. In the 1830s, so as to settle a land dispute between two brothers, he bought the land himself and sank a well
in its midst, to be shared by all the locals.
So it was that in 1862, when the Maharajah wanted to mark his loyalty to England as well as his gratitude to Reade, he hit upon the idea of a well. He had been told by Reade, who wrote of it in the Oxford Times, ‘The scenery in part of Benares is not unlike that of the Chiltern Hills’, where the deficiency of water was the same. Reade described the suffering in his own ‘native district’ of Oxfordshire, with people dependent on tadpole-filled water found in dirty ponds; of a ‘ baagin’ (‘tigress’) ‘wopping’ her son, and of urchins being cruelly thumped for ‘furtive quenchings of thirst’. The Maharajah determined on paying for a well in England.
Work began, at the Maharjah’s request, on the Prince of Wales’s wedding day in 1863 and was opened on Queen Victoria’s birthday a year later. The local paper gave an ebullient account of the proceedings: ‘The Nettlebed band was in great force, the crowd was enormous… and the Chiltern Hills never resounded with louder and more loyal cheers for the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the good Maharajah of Benares and his heir apparent, or the young Rajah as the rustics shouted, from inability to give out his proper name’ (which was Prabhu Narayan).
There were many more such loyally royal events ordained by the Maharajah: for the Prince of Wales’s recovery from typhoid, the labourers and yeomanry sat down to a ‘capital’ lunch, served to them by the ‘gentry’; when Queen Victoria survived an assassination attempt in 1882, the village children were given a celebratory tea.
A golden elephant stands atop the machinery, ‘by means of which an old woman can bring up a bucket containing nine gallons of water’. The well had been dug by two men in shifts with spades, in a claustrophobically small, four-feet-india-meter shaft, delving downwards 390ft – more than twice the height of Nelson’s column. Think of it; with a mere pinprick of daylight on high. There were pleasing acknowledgements to India, such as the four-acre Ishree Bagh cherry orchard, created, as was the Indian custom, to raise funds for the upkeep of the well. Its prettiness warranted organised days out from Reading.
In 1866, the rules for the well’s maintenance stipulated that you ‘thank God for his gift of pure water; and remember the giver of this well asks nothing more of you than to observe… proper precautions.’ Three cheers for the Maharajah!