Berhampore
— a quiet town with a loud history.
Not only on a wall.
“Berhampore sits on the west bank of the Bhagirathi River, about 200 kilometres north of Kolkata, and serves as the administrative seat of Murshidabad district. The British raised a cantonment here in 1767, and the parade ground saw the first refusal of the new Enfield cartridge in February 1857, two months before the great Mutiny began at Meerut. The old barracks line is still walkable, and the Mughal-Nawabi capital at Murshidabad lies just upriver.
Berhampore, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Berhampore, also spelled Baharampur, is the headquarters of Murshidabad district in West Bengal, on the west bank of the Bhagirathi River about 200 kilometres north of Kolkata. The British East India Company laid out a military cantonment on the site in 1767, the first major posting after the Battle of Plassey eight years earlier. The town carried a population of around 195,000 at the 2011 census and sits at roughly 19 metres of elevation on the lower Gangetic plain. The Mughal-Nawabi capital of Murshidabad lies twelve kilometres upriver.
The Bhagirathi is the western distributary of the Ganges as it leaves Bihar, flowing south through Murshidabad to become the Hooghly below Nabadwip. Berhampore's old riverfront ghats served the British cantonment for supplies brought up from Calcutta by country boat. The river runs widest in late August at the close of the monsoon and narrowest in March. The west bank holds the city; the east bank, reached over an iron bridge first built in the late nineteenth century, opens into the rice country that once fed the Company's army.
Berhampore is a long-distance railway stop on the Sealdah-Lalgola line, about four hours from Kolkata Sealdah. The cantonment district remains laid out on its original 1767 grid, with the Barrack Square Tank at its centre and the church of St John still standing on the parade ground. Local historians point out the line where, on 26 February 1857, sepoys of the 19th Native Infantry refused to load the new Enfield cartridges, the first refusal that grew into the larger uprising of that summer. Murshidabad, with the Hazarduari Palace and the Katra Mosque, lies a short shared-taxi ride upriver.