SRI LANKA - RELICS OF THE BRITISH ERA

By viceland

This photo story by Martin Parr focuses on Nuwara Eliya, a town in Sri Lanka where the British colonial way of life carries on just as it did in the early part of the last century. The Brits developed Nuwara Eliya as a hill station in the heart of their tea estates. It became a place where planters, businessmen, diplomats and soldiers could escape the steamy heat of the lowlands and enjoy some home comforts. Here they built elegant villas and bungalows, with white fretwork and green corrugated iron roofs. They grew English flowers and vegetables. They established a golf course, a park, a club, several half-timbered hotels and guest houses and the race course. When the British left Ceylon in 1948, these oh-so-English institutions and traditions, far from slipping into neglect and decay, were taken over, tended to and nurtured by the Sri Lankans.