CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
when Kiernander built his church there were no houses between it and the tank. One of the set of Baillie's engravings of 1794, already alluded to, gives a view of "Tank Square" which shows the church clearly. It is interesting to note, in view of the large buildings recently erected at this end of Old Court House Street, that, up to May, 1806, a restraint lay on this ground from building upper-roomed houses—a restriction possibly imposed long before, in connection with the Old Fort.
In addition to building the church, Kiernander erected a school-house and minister's house adjoining the church; and when, in 1773, his second wife died, he buried her in a plot of land adjoining the burial-ground in Park Street, which he purchased and devoted to the use of the Mission congregation. Kiernander had evidently a weakness for bricks and mortar, for in addition to the Mission buildings he built for himself a house in Camac Street, which he called Beth Saron, and a "garden house" at Bhowanipore, which he named Saron Grove, and which now forms a portion of the premises of the London Missionary Society. Unfortunately for himself, Kiernander's eldest son shared his father's taste, and, in 1787, he induced the old man to stand security for a large sum of money which he raised for the purpose of building
82
