Ooty’s own Charing Cross and its London disconnect

It is a matter of amusement among residents of The Nilgiris that visitors to the hill station, looking to find Charing Cross on navigation services, are confused at being redirected to the location of the same name in London.

Charing Cross, which has also come to be spelled Charring Cross over the years, has long been the entrance to Udhagamandalam (popularly known as Ooty), the district headquarters. However, little is known about how its name came to be. “The name of this busy London railway station has long been applied to the road junction in Ootacamund below Breeks School, where the Coonoor Road makes connection with the Mysore Road, Kotagiri Road, Garden Road and Commercial Road… In its centre is an ornate public fountain commemorating William Patrick Adam, a Governor of Madras,” writes anthropologist Paul Hockings in his Encyclopedia of The Nilgiri Hills.

‘A stone cross’

Hockings says the “Ootacamund crossroads and the London railway station could not be more dissimilar, for while Ootacamund’s Charing Cross is just a crossroads,” while Charing Cross in “Central London recalls a no-longer-extant memorial stone cross that Kind Edward I erected, the last of a series spread across the country from Lincolnshire where his Queen Eleanor had died in 1290, marking the places where her corpse had rested on the way back to London.”

Despite these observations on the dissimilarities of the two sites, it has become an enduring myth among many residents that the Charing Cross in Udhagamandalam is modelled on the one in London.

P.J. Vasanthan, a resident interested in The Nilgiris’ history, told The Hindu that the name first appeared in 1838, a few years after the Coonoor Ghat Road was opened and the junction at the entrance of Udhagamandalam was formed. In 1847, British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton mocked the name as “established but underwhelming”.

A view of Charing Cross with Adams Fountain in Udhagamandalam
| Photo Credit:
M. Sathyamoorthy

Local historians believe the Charing Cross in Udhagamandalam could have been named for its function as a four-road junction, similar to its namesake in London. Mr. Vasanthan said that after the Coonoor Ghat Road was opened, shops and businesses came up around the area and people started calling it Charing Cross because of the influence of the British administration. “Before the opening of the Coonoor Ghat Road, travellers would make their way up the slopes to the village of Dhimbatty near Kotagiri, travel through Thummanatty and to Doddabetta, and walk downwards into the heart of what is today Udhagamandalam town,” he said. “Since a cluster of shops was being formed at the time owing to the opening of the Ghat Road, the name of Charing Cross stuck,” he said.

Visiting The Nilgiris in 1835, Baron Charles von Hugel had not yet used its present name to describe it. It was only in 1838 that DeBurgh Birch, in his topographical report, first mentioned the area as Charing Cross. Because of its central location, Charing Cross was the place where important personages had been welcomed to the district and where some of them had even made speeches. “In the early 1900s, Lord Curzon made his closing remarks at Charing Cross. He said, ‘I came, I saw, and I was conquered by the charm that is Ootacamund’,” Mr. Vasanthan said. The location itself has witnessed significant changes since it began to be called by the name.

A famous fountain

The Adam’s Fountain, a photoshoot spot for tourists, was built in 1886 as a memorial to William Patrick Adam, former Governor of Madras. The fountain, which has become the irreplaceable centre of the Charing Cross, had previously been installed in front of the Collector’s office. It was moved to the present location in 1898. A melanoxylon tree had to be removed to make way for the fountain, which some guides had described as being “a rather grotesque Victorian cast-iron fountain”.

Over the centuries, the square has become famous for welcoming dignitaries, including Nikita Khrushchev and Jawaharlal Nehru. Even today, most dignitaries who come up the Coonoor Ghat Road make a brief stop at the Charing Cross before being welcomed into the town.