01Kongu and Perur
The Kongu country, the upland between the Nilgiris and the Kaveri, lay on the road the Romans’ trade took from the west coast through the Palghat gap; hoards of Roman coins have been found around Coimbatore. The Perur Patteeswarar temple on the Noyyal grew under the Cholas and was greatly enlarged by the Nayakas of Madurai, who added the Kanaka Sabha with its carved pillars of Shiva’s forms. The city itself grew from the 16th century under the Nayakas, then passed to Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, and to the British in 1799.
02Chinnamalai and the oil press
After Tipu’s fall the Kongu palayakkarar Dheeran Chinnamalai refused Company rule and, with the Marudhu brothers and Oomaithurai, planned an attack on the British garrison at Coimbatore in 1800; the plan was given away before it could be carried out, but he fought on until he was hanged at Sankagiri in 1805. A century later V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, whose Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company had challenged British shipping at Tuticorin, was sentenced in 1908 and held in Coimbatore Central Jail, where he was made to turn the oil press like a bullock. The press is kept at the jail as a memorial to him.
The life of this place
- 1799After Tipu Sultan’s fall Coimbatore passes to the British.
- 1800Dheeran Chinnamalai and his allies plan to storm the Coimbatore garrison.
- 1908V. O. Chidambaram is imprisoned in Coimbatore jail and put to the oil press.
