Old Park Kachcheri (Jaffna)
The old Jaffna Kachcheri Building (Sinhala: යාපනය පැරණි උද්යාන කච්චේරිය; Tamil: பழைய பூங்கா, யாழ்ப்பாணம்) is located in Jaffna Old Park premises near the Secretariat of the Governor of Northern Province in Jaffna District, Sri Lanka. The word Kachcheri (or District Secretariat) is used to denote the principal government department that administrates a district in Sri Lanka. History Although the history of this site runs back to the period of Dutch rule (1658-1796 A.D.), the existing building at the site has been built during the British period, around the time of P. Dyke, a British regional commissioner who purchased the adjacent land that is Old Park today and built a residence and garden in 1829 (Haramoto et al., 2015). Historical accounts regarding this building can be found in several written sources such as Volume II of the History of the Public Works Department from 1796-1896 (Dias et al., 2016; Wijebandara, 2014). During this period, the building had been used as Kachcheri or…
