The Old Stables (Delft Island)
The remains of an Old Stable (Sinhala: ඩෙල්ෆ්ට් අශ්ව ස්ථාලය; Tamil: டெல்ஃப்ட் குதிரை லாயங்கள்) is found located in Sarappiddy village on the island of Delft (Tamil: Neduntheevu), in Jaffna District, Sri Lanka. History
The wild horses found on the present Delft island are believed to be the offspring of the horses brought to the island from foreign countries by the Portuguese who had control of several coastal areas in Sri Lanka including the Jaffna Peninsula from 1597 to 1658 (Wijebandara, 2014). After the Portuguese, the Dutch occupied those regions from 1658 to 1796 and during this period the Delft island was an important administrative centre of them. Rev. Philippus Baldaeus
(1632-1671 A.D.), a Dutch minister who was in Jaffna during the Dutch period has mentioned in his travel records that the people on the island captured horses by chasing them towards swamps (Wijebandara, 2014). In 1796, the British expelled the Dutch and eventually managed to bring Sri Lanka under the British…
