Qualla: Old Colombo Lighthouse

Old Colombo Lighthouse: Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan arndt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The clock was ready 43 years before the tower was. In 1814, Governor Sir Robert Brownrigg commissioned a clock for Colombo at a cost of 1,200 pounds. Then, for reasons of economy, the colonial administration put it in a warehouse and left it there. For four decades, Colombo's official timepiece sat in a crate while the city told time by the sun and the harbor bells. It was not until 1857 that the clock finally found a home - a 29-meter tower at the junction of Chatham Street and Queens Road (now Janadhipathi Mawatha), designed not by a government architect but by Emily Elizabeth Ward, the wife of Governor Sir Henry George Ward. The tower she designed would become the tallest structure in Colombo, a lighthouse that guided ships for 85 years, and a clock tower whose mechanism came from the same workshop that built Big Ben.

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Image: Dan arndt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Colombo Lighthouse: A Governor's Wife and a Clockmaker's Masterpiece

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Jolle~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Emily Elizabeth Ward's tower was completed on 25 February 1857 and formally commissioned the following month. The Public Works Department built it under the supervision of John Flemming Churchill, Director General of Public Works, but the design belonged to Ward - an unusual cred...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Jolle~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Colombo Lighthouse: When the Tower Became a Lighthouse

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0. In 1867, a navigational light was installed in the tower, transforming the clock tower into a dual-purpose structure - timekeeper and harbor guide in one. The revolving dioptric light, built by Chance Brothers of Birmingham, sat at a focal plane 140 meters above sea level and was...

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Image: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Old Colombo Lighthouse: Blinded by Its Own Success

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan arndt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The harbor that the lighthouse served brought prosperity, and prosperity brought buildings, and buildings blocked the light. By the mid-20th century, the structures rising around the port had grown tall enough to obscure the lighthouse beam from approaching vessels. The navigatio...

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Image: Dan arndt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Old Colombo Lighthouse: The Clock That Outlived the Fort

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan arndt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The fort ramparts that once enclosed this corner of Colombo were demolished between 1869 and 1871, part of the British decision to clear the obsolete defenses for military barracks and modern development. The lighthouse erected in 1829 on the ramparts was demolished along with th...

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Image: Dan arndt | CC BY-SA 4.0