Old photos of Nuwara Eliya

Nuwara Eliya is a hill town in the central highlands of Sri Lanka, set in a valley below Pidurutalagala, the island's highest mountain. The site was noted by a British hunting party in the early 19th century, and Governor Edward Barnes established a sanatorium and rest house there in the 1820s. It grew into a hill station where British planters and officials escaped the heat of the lowlands, and its cool climate led to experiments with English vegetables and, after the failure of coffee in the 1870s, to the tea plantations that cover the surrounding slopes.

The town acquired a golf course, a racecourse, a post office in Tudor style, an Anglican church, and hotels and bungalows built in the manner of an English country town, which earned it the name Little England. Lake Gregory was created by damming a stream in the 1870s, and the Hakgala botanical gardens nearby were founded in the same period. Nuwara Eliya became a fashionable resort in the April season, and after independence in 1948 it remained a holiday town for Sri Lankans as well as a centre of the tea industry.

Old photographs of Nuwara Eliya typically show tea estates and pluckers on the hillsides, the Grand Hotel and other colonial buildings, the racecourse, the lake, and the mountain road climbing from the plains.

What the photos show

The 172 photographs of Nuwara Eliya on PlaceWas span 6 decades, from 1885 to 2023. 12 of them were taken before 1980; the other 160 are recent views of the same streets and landmarks.28 spots were photographed more than once, so you can compare the same street, square or building across the years.172 of the photos carry a written caption explaining what is in the frame. Every picture is pinned to the place it was taken, so the map below shows where the photographers stood.