Photo credit: Google Street View
Awariwatta Survey Tower (Sinhala: කටුනායක ඇවරිවත්ත මිනුම් කුළුණ) is an old tower located on the wayside of Baseline road between Katunayake and Seeduwa in Gampaha District, Sri Lanka. The Kandawala Survey Tower which was the oldest survey tower in the Katunayake area collapsed on the ground on 28 November 2015 due to the negligence of relevant government authorities.
History
The Department of Survey of Sri Lanka (or the Department of the Surveyor General) which is the oldest unchanged government department in the country, was established by the British on 2 August 1800 (Vithana, 2006). Under the Surveyor General W. D. Gosset (1855-1858), the establishment of control for surveys on the island commenced with the base measurements in 1857 for Principal Triangulation and several survey towers were used across the country for this process (Dias et al., 2016).
The tower presently standing at Awariwatta, Katunayaka is said to be one of the towers used by the British for surveying purposes.
The tower
The cylindrical-shaped tower has three representative stories and they get smaller as the tower rises from the bottom to the top. At the bottom of it, an arch-shaped passage can be seen while on the top of the tower is a platform for surveyors to take measurements.
References
1) Dias, M.; Koralage, S.B.; Asanga, K., 2016. The archaeological heritage of Jaffna peninsula. Department of Archaeology. Colombo. p.226.
2) Vithana, P. K., 2006. Surveying and mapping in Sri Lanka. Seventeenth United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific Bangkok. pp.1-9.
Location Map
This page was last updated on 25 June 2023
