GEORGE TOWN: The first Protestant cemetery in the heart of George Town where Captain Francis Light lays interred will be given a new lease of life via a RM230,000 upgrading project.
George Town World Heritage Inc (GTWHI) general manager Lim Chooi Ping said the work would focus on making the place conducive for visitors as the site was popular with tourists.
She said a new walkway and lighting would be installed while tomb inscriptions would be re-inked and tombs cleared from foliage.
She stressed work would not affect the existing landscape and all efforts were taken to comply with heritage preservation regulations.
"Whatever work done will have minimal impact on the burial plots," she said in a press conference today with Local Government Committee chairman Chow Kon Yeow and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Centre for Global Archaeological Research deputy director Dr Stephen Chia.
The project is expected to be completed next month with the site housing more than 500 burial plots and is home to remains of many prominent Penang residents during colonial times.
Other than Light, the remains of Thomas Leonowens, husband to Anna Harriet Emma Edwards of musical "King and I" fame, Penang Free School founder Reverend R. S. Hutchings and Calcutta (now Kolkata) Supreme Chief Justice Sir William O. Russel are buried in the cemetery at Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah here.
The cemetery was established in 1789 after Light opened Penang as a British trading post in 1786 with the earliest recorded burial being one H. D. D. Cunningham in 1789 while one Cornelia Van Someran was the last to be buried in 1892.
Lim also said work to restore the tombs started in 2013 where 50 tombs were repaired in the first phase while the second phase to repair 30 tombs began in September this year.
"The cost so far is about RM150,000 and we hope to restore all the tombs soon," she said adding the tomb repair work was separate from the current upgrading project.
Source : http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1220172
