CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
repair it or purchase it. He wants a regular survey to be held upon it, so recommended him to call in Tiretta (Civil Architect).
"October 30th, 1795. Tiretta called; accompanied him to G. Williamson's. Tiretta is for building two rooms, I am for pulling the whole down; for to obtain these two upper rooms, he must build four, namely the two lower ones also, and these certainly at a loss, for they can never be put to any use, being so low, only level with the compound. Williamson said it was the Government House when he came out, but believes it was taken for that purpose merely because it had doors and windows to it; the Mohammedans had burnt those of other houses at the capture of Calcutta."
From the above description it seems clear that this cannot have been the house which Francis called "the best house in the town" when he rented it twenty years earlier, and Dr. Busteed's identification of the site of the Royal Exchange as the position of this latter house is probably correct. In the "Plan of the Territory of Calcutta in 1742," given as an inset in Upjohn's map, "Mr. Eyre's house" is shown to the north of St. Anne's Church, the position described by the diarist as "behind Writers' Buildings." In Upjohn's own map, 1792-3, what was presumably the same house is shown
70
