Features

The story of Wellawatte

Published

2 years ago

2024/02/19

Wellawatte beach, though not very wide, is of any significance in Colombo, the rest of its shoreline being with little or no beach with plenty of rock (Courtesy Asiff Hussein)

Asiff Hussein, the Author of The Great Days of Colombo, speaks to The Island on how Wellawatte came to be and the origins of its street names.

Interviewed by Ifham Nizam

Q: You have covered Wellawatte fairly extensively in your book, The Great Days of Colombo. Could you share with our readers something about your findings in the course of your research?

A:Wellawatte is a fairly new addition to Colombo City which originally started in the Fort and Pettah areas before expanding to the outlying areas, like Cinnamon Gardens and the long stretch from Colpetty to Wellawatte, which is its southernmost limit.

Although today Wellawatte is a very busy part of Colombo, it was not very populated until about a century ago. Its Sinhala name literally means ‘Sandy Garden’. This suggests a rather deserted area or sandy wasteland. It could also mean ‘Beach Garden’. In contrast to the more northern coastal areas of Colombo, Wellawatte has a small beach which also has a swimming club of its own, the famous Kinross Club.

That it originally meant ‘beach garden’ is supported by the statement of Dr. P.R.C. Peterson who, in his memoirs Great Days (2001); speaks of his childhood in Wellawatte: “When we were a little older we used to play in the garden near the railway station, where we had to dodge a few coconut trees as we ran about. The owner once introduced two donkeys into the garden. We lads made some reins of coir rope and bits of coconut branches and rode these animals bareback“.

But could there be more to it ? It is possible that Wellawatta actually got its name from wasteland that could have come about here after it was inundated by sea water from a Tsunami, or tidal wave, a long time ago. As a result, the salty soil would have ensured it remained barren for a considerable time. This is supported by the discovery of a horizon of Sandstone, or Beach Rock, a kilometre inland from the seacoast, at the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills, as well as the presence near the coast there of coral reef beneath the top soil.

Here, underneath a layer of vegetable earth, was found a stratum of sea sand with marine shells, overlying a reef or stratum of coral fragments, with the coral reef itself resting on course grey sandy clay. So what this shows is that the sea had made incursions into the land in remote times and converted it into a sandy wasteland of sorts, which could explain the origin of the name Wellawatte.

Fishing on the headland facing the sea on Bambalapitiya-Wellawatte border (Courtesy Asiff Hussein)

Q: So how did Wellawatte evolve to what it is today, a very busy cosmopolitan zone of Colombo if it was so sparsely populated back then?

A: I guess that’s because the Burghers and Tamils decided to move in and call it home. Much of the property, on the seaside of Wellawatte, is believed to have been a vast coconut estate, owned by a Burgher gentleman named Charlemont Jonathan Gauder. In fact, it is after him and his relatives that many of the roads of Wellawatte, such as Charlemont Road, Frederica Road, Collingwood Road, Alexandra Road and Frances Road are named. Other prominent Burgher familiess, who lived in Wellawatte about a century or so ago, were the Christoffelsz who lived at Lyttelton, Ephraims who lived at Homerton, the Gauders who lived at Chrislyn and the Pouliers who lived at Lawrence Villa.

Indeed as late as the 1960s, Burgher men could be seen lazily lounging in the verandahs of their houses on either side of Galle Road. The existence of a Dutch Reformed Church, on Galle Road, must have also helped unite the Burghers here. These Burghers jealously preserved their anglicized lifestyle, even until the 1960s when the men wore lounge suits or, in the least, long-sleeved shirts and cravats to the 6 o’clock film at the Savoy, and their wives donned hats and wore gloves to Evensong at the Dutch Reformed Church, close to Arethusa Lane. Carl Muller, in his novel Yakada Yaka, vividly brings out the Burgher ethos of the area in the following vein: “Old Phoebus would come, and Jerry Jonklaas and Dumbo Matthysz from Arethusa Lane”.

Another impetus came from the Tamils. In fact, Wellawatte is humorously referred to as Little Jaffna after its huge Tamil population. Many Jaffna Tamils seem to have settled here in the couple of decades before independence. They were mainly into clerical jobs in various government departments. These government servants lived with fellow Tamil clerks as boarders in chummeries situated a little away from Galle Road.

Available records show that in the inter-war years, especially the 1920s, there were Tamils serving government or as company clerks who were settled in Perera Lane, Hampden Lane and Fernando’s Lane. There were others living as boarders in places such as Boswell Place and High Street until as late as the 1960s. Over time, they would have amassed enough wealth to buy properties there and get down their families. Before this, they had to look after their families up north and used to remit much of their salaries via money order through the Wellawatte Post Office.

Another community that moved in fairly early were the Moors. In fact, there is a Moor Road on the seaside of Wellawatte. There is also a very large mosque, one of the largest in Colombo, on Galle Road.

So here we have it. It was the settlement here of various minority communities that facilitated the transition of Wellawatte from a largely uptown residential area to the booming downtown area it is today. With the coming of the Tamils, the famous vegetarian restaurants of the area boomed and when the Moors came, the “Muslim hotels” were not long in coming. Over time, other restaurants and sweet houses to meet the varied tastes of its mixed population followed. And so we have the culinary paradise that is Wellawatte today.

Q; What can you tell us about the street names of Wellawatte and how they originated?

A: As I mentioned earlier, Wellawatte is a relatively recently developed urban area. As such its street names are not very old. In fact, only a few seem to go back to over a century.

Geoff Ells in his book Colombo Jumbo, published in 2012, has done a lot of good work on the street names of Wellawatte, though there are other little-known street names, some now lost, that I was able to trace going through old records.

The Burghers, as I said, were a prominent community in the early days of Wellawatte. One such Burgher family, who originally hailed from Germany and who contributed a lot to the street names here, were the Gauders who owned land on both the sea side and land side of Galle Road. There was already a Gauder’s Lane in Wellawatte in the early 1900s where photographer Finlay Ingleton lived though it has since been lost.

In later times we hear of Charlemont Road named after Christian Charle-Mount Gauder, Hotel and landed proprietor who lived at Chrislyn in Wellawatte, Frederika Road named after his aunt, Frances Road after his daughter-in-law and Alexandra Road which must have mistakenly called thus after his son Alexander. Collingwood Place must have been named after Hector Collingwood Gauder, another member of the family.

Asiff Hussein

Poulier’s Lane, now known as Pereira Lane, must have been named after a Burgher gentleman going by the name of Poulier and was known from the 1930s, if not earlier. Its present name of Pereira Lane probably takes after George Pereira, Station Master for the Ceylon Government Railway. We also hear of St. Boswell’s Road in Wellawatte in the early 1900s until about WW I and it is possible that this is identical with Boswell Place which is suppose to have been named after the famous British travel writer James Boswell. Vaverset Place off Galle Road was known from the 1920s though it is surprisingly hard to trace whom it was named after. In the 1930s also spelt as Vaversett Place.

Pennyquick Road seems to take its name from Charles Pennyquick, a Ceylonese Civil Servant who became Mayor of Colombo in the 1890s during whose tenure the eradication of stray dogs was taken to an all new high with a gas chamber since he deemed drowning the poor creatures in the Beira Lake inhumane. De Almeida Place seems to have been named after a scion of the family of that name since we hear of Villa Sorrets in De Almeida Place where Dr. Milanious De Almeida lived in the inter-war years. And Hamer’s Avenue takes after a scion of the Burgher family of Hamer.

High Street which leads from Galle Road to Pamankade also seems to be quite old and was known in the inter-war years, if not before. It was renamed W. A. Silva Mawatha in the 1960s after well known Sinhala novelist Wellawattearchchige Abraham Silva who lived down the road in his family residence Silvermere. Stratford Avenue which leads to Kirulapone Junction takes after the birthplace of British playwright William Shakespeare Stratford-Upon-Avon. What seems to have influenced the naming of this road is the bridge over the canal which it leads to, just like the one over the Avon in England. Ash Tip Road seems to have once been the site of a municipal waste disposal operation. It is known in Sinhala as Aluwala Para (Ash Pit Road).

Peterson Lane probably takes its name from a much-respected government clerk George Peterson who lived down the lane. Dr .P. R. C. Peterson in his memoirs Great Days (2001) holds that the lane was so called after his father George who served in the clerical establishment, a much-respected position back then in the 1890s.

He recalls how the name came to be when one Sunday morning his father was in his garden and the Assistant Government Agent passed by on horseback along what was then a footpath and was asked by him if there was a name to the lane. Pat came the reply: “No name, but the village folk, the children and so on call it Peterson Lane”. The AGA called on his subordinate to make a note of it and it was henceforth officially called as such.

Geoff Ells in his book on Colombo’s Street Names mentions an Andarewatta Road in Wellawatte whose old name he gives as Second Lane and whose origins he traces to the Andrees, a surname borne by a prominent Burgher family of Prussian origin. However, I have since not been able to trace such a road in Wellawatte though there is one such road in the Havelock Town zone. Could Ells have been mistaken or was there a road in Wellawatte named by some of its residents as such?

There are also a few street names that seem to have disappeared. These include Niles Place and Cool Path Lane which were known in the inter-war years and occur in the Supplement to the Ceylon Government Gazette of December 11, 1925. There was also a Pond Road and Botejue Lane off Galle Road Wellawatte in the inter-war years. By the 1930s we hear of Colonel’s Avenue where there was a house called Lilac and where one Samy Lebbe Marikkar lived. We also hear of Theatre Road in Wellawatte where one Sorab Darashaw lived in the early 1930s.

It’s, indeed, strange what happened to these street names. Did they disappear just like that or were they replaced by other street names? I guess this is an area where more research is needed.

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Features

Trump’s tariffs, AKD’s gazette and Sri Lanka’s diplomatic slumber

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

“We are rather respectable in Colombo. We go to bed fairly early, and we remain there till morning. “

According to Sri Lanka’s diplomatic folklore, the late S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike uttered these words while explaining the reasons for Sri Lanka’s abstention on the UN resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Apparently, SWRD’s foreign ministry officials were asleep at home when the diplomatic cable seeking instructions was received from New York. In those days, there were no cell phones, Internet, or even fax or telex machines. The diplomatic cables were sent through post offices. Decoding them was a slow and time-consuming process. Thus, the government could not provide appropriate instructions to our mission in New York in time, and the Sri Lankan delegation abstained on that sensitive UN vote.

Sri Lanka’s Absence from Section 301 Consultations

But then, how does one explain Sri Lanka’s absence from the crucial bilateral consultation held in Washington by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) during March-April on “Forced Labour” under the Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974? Didn’t our foreign and trade ministries send appropriate instructions to Washington in time? Even if the instructions from the foreign ministry were transmitted to our embassy in Washington by pigeon carriers, there was enough time for Sri Lanka to participate in those meetings.

In March, the USTR initiated these 301 investigations on 60 trading partners, and invited all of them for confidential consultations. Out of the 60, 46 participated in these consultations. Sri Lanka was not one of them. Other countries that didn’t participate in these consultations included China, Russia, and Venezuela! In addition to that, the Section 301 Committee conducted a public hearing with interested parties on April 28 and 29. Washington-based diplomats, representatives from few trade ministries as well as representatives from many foreign trade associations and chambers participated in these hearings. Sri Lanka was once again conspicuously absent.

As a result, when the USTR published the proposed forced labour tariffs on June 2nd, Sri Lanka ended up with a 12.5% duty. Pakistani and Indonesian diplomats participated in these consultations and took appropriate follow-up measures, and managed to enter the 10% duty category. As even a threat of a modest tariff hike could disrupt supply chains and reduce competitiveness, particularly in an industry such as garments, I discussed this issue on 15 June and underscored the importance of Sri Lanka’s participation at the next hearing, which was scheduled to be held from July 7th .

Awakening from Diplomatic Slumber and AKD’s Gazette

Fortunately, Sri Lanka finally awoke from weeks of diplomatic slumber, and Ambassador Mahinda Samarasinghe participated in the public hearing on 9 July, and promised, “…. · We have agreed to the text in our negotiations with the USTR on forced labour, …. The gazette as we speak is being printed and I’m getting the gazette tomorrow morning, and the gazette will be shared with USTR as I get it“.

As promised, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued a gazette on 10 July banning the imports of goods produced by forced labour. These new regulations are very similar to what Pakistan and Indonesia enacted in April, after their consultations with USTR in March. Why couldn’t we do it in April? Why did we wait till the very last minute?

Challenges ahead

“War is too important to be left to generals alone,” is a famous saying attributed to former French Premier Georges Clemenceau. Similarly, monitoring our main markets is too important to be left to diplomats alone. The United States is the largest single-country market for Sri Lanka. Therefore, Sri Lankan trade chambers and associations should become more proactive in these markets and participate in these events. For example, the chairman of the Pakistani apparel exporters association participated in the April hearings. Similarly, representatives from the Indian Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and Reliance Industries also participated in July hearings. At an event where each speaker is given only five minutes (strictly enforced), having a number of speakers from a country is an advantage. The presence of industry representatives in these kinds of events also help them understand the market dynamics and the future challenges. This is important, particularly because there will be many more challenges with Trump’s tariffs.

With the gazette issued on 10 July, Sri Lanka has imposed a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour. Now, the challenge will be to effectively enforce the prohibition. And what are the goods produced with forced labour? The USTR list only focuses on aluminum, cotton, electronics, lithium-ion batteries, rice, and tobacco. However, according to the U.S. Department of Labour, the list is much longer. Hence, this list may change continuously during the next two years and tariffs may fluctuate once again.

So, this is definitely not the time to slumber.

(The writer, a retired public servant, can be reached at senadhiragomi@gmail.com)

by Gomi Senadhira ✍️

Features

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 10 Casino for Sale

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

After the overwhelming grotesquerie of J K Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike novel (written, I should have noted, as the others were, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith), I thought I should return to the world of fun, and also a much shorter description since this thriller moves quickly without the layers of detail that Rowling engages in.

I then move to the second comic thriller by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon. This, their second story to feature Vladimir Stroganoff and Adam Quill, was Casino for Sale, as lunatic a romp as the first, though without the emphasis on the ballet that characterized A Bullet in the Ballet.

This one begins with the impresario Stroganoff buying a casino cheap from Baron Sam de Rabinovich, only to find that it was a rundown place, not the grand casino of La Bazouche, a resort on the Frenc+h Riviera, as he had initially thought. The grand one belonged to Lord Buttonhooke, and Stroganoff could not compete, until he thought of bringing the Ballet Stroganoff to the casino – which of course leads to Buttonhooke deciding to have ballet performances in his Casino too.

Stroganoff invites Quill to visit him, which Quill decides to do since he has left Scotland Yard, having come into a legacy. No one believes this, and he has to face questions as to what he did to have been sacked, with sympathy for having been found out.

Caryl and Simon

The day he arrives in La Bazouche there is a murder, of a vitriolic critic called Citrolo, in Stroganoff’s office. He had been going to write a damning review of the opening night of the ballet and Stroganoff, when he realizes Citrolo cannot be swayed, drugs him and dictates the review himself to the papers. He leaves Citrolo sleeping and finds him shot the next morning, whereupon he decides to muddy the waters and leave a suicide note and lots of other murder weapons. So much overkill, as it were, of course ensures that he is arrested.

But the excitable French detective who makes the arrest follows up his suggestion that Buttonhooke was also involved, and so the two casino owners find themselves in cells next door to each other, with the detective Gustave quite happy to provide creature comforts for a fee.

Quill decides he must investigate, and finds Gustave most cooperative, since he has a laid back attitude to work. So it is Quill that finds a notebook which makes it clear Citrolo is an accomplished blackmailer, and that there are lots of possible murderers, including Stroganoff’s croupier, who was crooked, Rabinovich, who was now working for Buttonhooke, a confidence trickster called Kurt Kukumber, whose prospectus for a dud gold mine was found in the office and Prince Alexis Artishok who was engaged in a deal to buy diamonds from the ballerina Dyra Dyrakova.

Stroganoff had been trying to get Dyrakova to dance for him, but having done so previously she had refused. But then to Stroganoff’s chagrin she agreed to dance for Buttonhooke. The clearly crooked Artishok had told Buttonhooke’s mistress Sadie Souse, who was not very bright, that Dyrakova possessed diamonds she was willing to sell cheap, and Sadie was determined to have them.

Quill meanwhile finds out that there was a secret passage to Stroganoff’s office, the obvious solution to what had begun as a locked room mystery, and that this was known by almost everyone apart from Stroganoff himself. And then Rabinovich is murdered, just after Gustave had released his two original suspects, leading him to blame Quill for having insisted on that and thus allowing them to kill again.

Soon afterwards Dyrakova arrives, and the town is full of posters announcing that she will appear in the casinos, elaborate posters for either one, since Stroganoff is determined that she will dance for him, and if she does not come willingly, he has devised a scheme to make her do so unwillingly. So, though Buttonhooke has her taken off to his yacht immediately she arrives at the station, Quill along with Arenskaya gets her into a launch and to Stroganoff’s casino, where she performs to tumultuous applause, not knowing for whom she is dancing.

When Quill asked her about the diamonds, she said she had sold them long ago, and that gave Quill the solution to the mystery. Rabinovich had known about this, and Artishok had killed him to prevent Sadie learning it from him, he had killed Citrolo who had recognized him for an accomplished card sharper, not a Russian prince at all. But before he is arrested, he gets away in a boat, and the police launch that pursues him is on the point of catching him up when it runs out of petrol.

Again, lots of excitement, and entertaining references – Gustave grows marrows – and if not quite as brilliant as its predecessor, Casino was certainly a delightful read.

Features

The challenge of being positive about SAARC

Published

2 days ago

2026/07/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

The RCSS forum addressed by SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar in progress. (Pic courtesy RCSS)

It was a few years back that a former President of Sri Lanka took it on himself to pronounce SAARC ‘dead’. Since then there have been other sections of Sri Lankan opinion that have joined the critics of SAARC and taken the solemn stance that SAARC has indeed died what may be called a natural death.

Their fatalism is understandable. SAARC has failed to meet at heads of government or state level for the past several years to take the SAARC process notably forward. Regional cooperation has more or less been only an appealing idea. No substantive concrete projects have taken off to make the idea a hard reality. ‘Inner paralysis’ seems to be SAARC’s lot. Hence the fatalism in these circles.

However, being one of the worst cash-strapped regions of the world and a teemingly populated one with people virtually left to their devices, what choices do the ‘SAARC Eight’ have other than to try their best to band together and continue with their cooperation efforts, however small they may be?

There is no escaping the mounting debt trap for many of these countries and bankrupt Sri Lanka is a glaring example, but ‘throwing in the towel’ and abandoning themselves entirely to the diktats of the strongest economies and their agencies will prove a ‘living death’ for many countries in the SAARC fold.

The gains may be meagre but giving-up on SAARC cooperation in full would prove self-defeating for the organization and South Asia. Right now, the collective intention ought to be to salvage what the region could from the tenuous cooperative efforts. Moreover, such initiatives could go some distance to generate a degree of goodwill among the Eight and help in sustaining a dialogue process.

Given this backdrop it proved ‘a stich in time’ for the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, to recently host the SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar to a round table discussion on the unifying potential of SAARC and its future possibilities, besides other related issue areas.

Held on June 24th and moderated by RCSS Executive Director and former ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, the forum brought together a vibrant, wide ranging audience comprising academicians, diplomats, senior public servants, civil society activists and many others. Following the presentation by Ambassador Golam Sarwar titled, ‘Reigniting SAARC: Achievements, Challenges and the Way Ahead’, a lively Q&A followed.

The above forum could be described as an act of lighting the proverbial ‘candle’ rather than ‘cursing the darkness.’ It surely is a ‘darkness’ that could be seen as daunting considering that the region’s pivotal powers, India and Pakistan, are failing to act in a spirit of accord but are engaged in bitter finger-pointing on a number of questions of vital importance to SAARC.

On the other hand, what is the rest of the region doing to bring the above sides together? It is disappointing that to date the rest of SAARC has failed to launch a major diplomatic drive to bring peace between the feuding regional heavyweights. It needs to act without delay and establish its earnestness and this effort would need to prove SAARC’s staying power in the unfolding months and even years.

In assessing SAARC’s seeming failure local opinion in particular has failed to factor in what could be described as weak leadership. Since Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh, the founding father of SAARC, the region has failed to produce a visionary leader who could advance the SAARC cause with charisma and drive.

Among other reasons, weak leadership accounts considerably for the faltering and stuttering status, as it were, of SAARC. Badly needed are leaders who could go the extra mile, think less of narrow national interests and work diligently towards the collective well being of the region but SAARC’s millions of ordinary people have been made to wait in vain for leaders of such stature. Instead, they have been burdened with politicians who seem to be relishing the apparently moribund state of SAARC.

Looking back, it could be said that it was the dynamic leadership factor that led to the launching of the Non-Aligned Movement and for its sustenance for a few decades. True, it could be seen in some quarters that NAM is no more, but as in the case of SAARC, the former too has been unfortunate to be burdened over the years with politicians who lack the vision and drive to unflaggingly advance the fortunes of the South. NAM and SAARC lack the dynamism and vision of leaders of the stature of Jawaharlal Nehru, for example, to give them the required guidance and intellectual depth.

The reasons are complex for there not being among us currently political leaders with the vision and the steadfast commitment to advance the legitimate interests of the South. However, it could be stated with conviction that the majority of Southern leaders have too easily caved in to the demands of the global North and its financial agencies.

These leaders have failed to see, for instance, that the largely market economy oriented Northern governments would not view with favour a centrist economic model that attaches priority to the interests of the dis-empowered publics of the South. This realization ought to have dawned on the current government in Sri Lanka, for instance, some while ago but it has no choice but to abide by IMF dictates since economic survival at present is unthinkable without the latter’s succour.

Accordingly for SAARC this should be the time for some soul-searching. Priority needs to be attached to ending the feuding between India and Pakistan since at present the material fortunes of the region hinge largely on these regional giants giving peaceful relations among them a try. This is no easy challenge to meet but some daring, visionary diplomacy needs to take hold among the rest of SAARC.

There is some sense in SAARC bringing the peoples of the region together through programs that address their best collective interests. A meeting of minds among SAARC nations could enable SAARC and its agencies to build a region-wide people’s movement for progressive political and economic change that could in turn lead to the region’s political leaders sensitizing themselves more to the neglected needs of their publics.

However, the time is ‘now’ for the initiation of these progressive changes and the voice of SAARC well wishers would need to drown out those of their critics.