CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
over a hundred and seventy thousand rupees by the time the church was completed. The ground selected for building the church was the old Powder Magazine Yard, which adjoined the burial-ground on the east This plot of land had been sold by the Government to the Maharaja Nobkissen, who now conveyed it back to Warren Hastings for the purpose of building a church. In the end, however, this ground was not utilized for the actual building, but formed the churchyard on the east, while the church was erected entirely within the boundaries of the old burial-ground, and the foundations were laid among the mouldering remains of scores upon scores of those who had died during the ninety years of the English occupation.
The church was erected from the design of Lieutenant James Agg, and under his superintendence; and chunar stone was largely used in its construction, as well as stone from the ruins of Gour, from where it was also proposed at first, but not carried out, to bring coloured marbles from the tombs of the old kings of Bengal. The stone church, or Pathuriya Girja as the natives call it, was consecrated on the 24th of June, 1787, under the name of St. John, and remained the presidency church till 1814, when, Calcutta having been constituted a bishopric, St. John's became
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