g a good air.' The Egmore Redoubt was evidently a need; for the
'Records' tell us that on various occasions its guns were fired at the
enemy. The enemy were for the most part horsemen of Haidar Ali or of
Tipu, his son and successor; and in 1799 the year in which Tipu was
killed, the need for the Redoubt disappeared. Adjoining the precincts
of the Redoubt were the premises of the Male Asylum, an Anglo-Indian
Orphanage, which required to be extended, and in the following year
the Madras Government gave the Redoubt to the Asylum, and the two
premises were turned into a common enclosure. In the beginning of the
present century the Directors of the Asylum sold their Egmore estate
to the South Indian Railway Company and removed to new premises in the
Poonamallee road; and what remains of the Egmore Redoubt is now the
habitation of some of the Railway employees.

[Illustration: THE EGMORE FORT (SIDE VIEW)]

The remains are of quaint interest. At some date or another the
authorities of the Asylum had an upper story added to one of the
military buildings, with the result that there is the strange
spectacle of a row of windowed chambers on the top of a buttressed and
battlemented wall, windowless and grim. The upper story has been built
into the battlements in such a manner that the outline of the
battlements is still clearly visible, and the building is a composite
reminder of old-time war and latter-day peace. The whole of the
lower part of the building, with its massive walls and its frowning
aspect, is of curious and suggestive interest; and the ground around,
which is extensively bricked, is a reminder of the fact that the
Redoubt in its original form was large indeed. The place provides
interesting material for antiquarian speculation.

[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE EGMORE FORT.

_The building is in the Male Asylum Road, and is now the residence of
some railway employees. Its upper part has been built upon a
battlemented wall, and doors have been let into the wall. The outlines
of the original wall and of some of the battlements can be easily
traced._]

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHURCH IN THE FORT

St. Mary's Church within the walls of Fort St. George is the oldest
Protestant church in India, and, except for some of the oldest bits of
the Fort walls, it is the oldest British building in Madras city, and
even in India itself. It dates from 1680.

When Madras was rising upon its foundations, the Company's employees