I have visited the old disused Protestant Cemetery (also known as the Northam Road Cemetery) in the historic centre of George Town, Penang before but it is always a great place to visit. Shaded by the numerous frangipani trees it is a cool place to wander through and explore all the old gravestones. The cemetery is only a short walk from the Eastern & Oriental Hotel on Northam Road (now Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah).
This old cemetery was established in 1786 and was the first cemetery to be consecrated after Captain Francis Light founded the Prince of Wales Island Settlement in 1786. The first recorded burial was of Lt. William Murray of the Bengal Artillery in 1787; the grave marker is no longer extant.The earliest surviving grave marker is that of one H.D.D. Cunningham from 1789 (the exact location of his/her grave within the grounds is unknown, though the plaque survives on a wall of the cemetery). The last person to be buried at the cemetery was Cornelia Josephine Van Someren in 1892. After that, the cemetery was closed and subsequent Christian burials have been carried out in the Western Road Cemetery.
The cemetery also contains 12 Chinese graves, refugees of the Taiping Rebellion, as well as the graves of some of Penang’s early German merchants and their relatives. There are a few Armenian graves, some with inscriptions in the Armenian script, in addition to English.
Captain Francis Light, who founded Penang, was buried here in 1794 and also buried in the cemetery are many of the early Governors of Penang, the brother of Stamford Raffles, Quintin Dick Thomas, and the husband of Anna Leonowens, inspiration for The King & I.
Of around 500 graves, over 25% are not identifiable due to weathering and damage. The tablets of many tombs have fallen off; some, which could not be matched to their tombs, are mounted on the south wall. A large number of the graves is of people who died before reaching 50 years of age; many of the men and women buried are in their twenties and thirties. Several graves belong to infants.
Behind this cemetery, accessible through a small door in the wall, is the adjacent Roman Catholic Cemetery.
After more than a century of neglect, the cemetery is now listed as a Class 1 Heritage Site and is maintained by the Penang Heritage Trust.
Stuart Taylor of HighlanderImages Photography has been making images for over 40 years focusing on Asia with a documentary/photojournalistic style.
Stuart is available for a variety of assignments in subject areas of photojournalism, commercial, architectural, real estate, industrial, interior design, corporate, urbex, adventure, wilderness, and travel.