Stories, Memories & Random Treasures

Soldiers' Home, Murree (circa 1899), also known as "Sandes Home": This must be the earliest photo of "Soldiers' Home, Murree." It was published in a 1915 edition of 'Enlisted, or My Story' by Lady Elise Sandes, recounting her life's work. In that edition there is a chapter about the effort to build a "home in the hills" for soldiers needing to get out of the heat. The Sandes Society was in the practice of taking pictures of each home, as it opened, in British India, so this may be where the picture comes from. Sandes Home in Murree was first opened on May 6, 1898.  This picture was taken briefly after the Home opened from a vantage point above Jhika Gali, and on the Kashmiri Point end of Murree ridge. Note these things in the photo: (1) Almost no rust on the roof - just bright, shiny, new metal. (2) The approach to the building is along a footpath on the right, and up the old staircase on the Ashe Wing side. If there is another path crossing the front of the building and going around the left side, it is completely obscured in this picture.  (3) The lawns in front of the building have no visible stairwell, and appear more gradually sloping (not terraced). (4) There appear to be no trees along the front of the building - probably they were planted there after construction. (5) There do not appear to be any buildings or developed grounds behind the building at all.  It is thickly forested. This is consistent with early descriptions by Anna Ashe, who ran the facility when it opened. She made some mention that soldiers who stayed there in the first few months helped clear trees.  It also bears mentioning that the Ashe Wing must have been named after Anna Ashe, who worked closely with Lady Elise Sandes, and was the Sandes Society representative sent out to India to establish the homes in Rawalpindi, and in Murree.  

The original name of the Home was the Lockhart Soldier's Home, named for the General and benefactor who gave the money for it to be constructed.

Sandes Home, Murree (circa 1971), also known as "Soldiers' Home":  This picture of Sandes Home was part of a series of numbered postcard photos taken probably around 1917, which is when the brownie camera, and personal photography, first became available. In this photo you can see some of the trees we remember from the front of Sandes Home, although they are rather small -- probably only about 20 years old by then.  Even in this photo you don't see electric lines running to the building.  Other accounts of the history of Murree suggest that electrification really began during the 1920s.  Also notice that the path going to the right is clearly still there, but now there is another path crossing the front and heading over to the left side of the building.  There still does not appear to be a stairwell going up to the center front of the building.  But the grounds appear to be more leveled and terraced along the front, as they were in later years.  The paths are too narrow for motorized vehicles, and have the same kind of wooden cross-rail fencing that appears in all of the oldest photos of Murree along the edges of roads.  Consider that the roads from Murree to upper and lower Topa remained unpaved until during WWI sometime.  For the first 20 years of its existence, soldiers from the Kuldana, Upper Topa, and Lower Topa encampments (they were mostly seasonal tent cities then) would walk to Sandes Home along those roads, just as we did. But there were also footpaths through the woods (over the top of Sandes Hill from Upper Topa, or up from Jhika Gali and Kuldana, and the "shortcut" up from the Lower Topa road).  These may all have been part of the original construction, as seen in these photos, to convenience soldiers walking to and from Sandes Home.    

Robert Bailey: "I found my son, Moses, on that shortcut path almost 100 years to the day after the home first opened."   

"Jhika Gali" - This photo (found online) indicates a 1910 date, but I think that is much too early. The vehicle is more recent than 1910. Notice that the guard shack is also missing, which appears in every photo up to the end of World War I, including the photo of Jhika Gali in the snow, which was possibly taken as late as 1930. So, I think this photo must fit into a date range of 1930-1947. It looks much more like the arrangement of buildings in the 1940s and 1950s. Unfortunately the buildings block the view to see if the guard shack is at the base of Sandes Hill, which would place it at around the time of Partition.

 "Jhika Gali Bazaar" - Photo of Jhika during or just after World War I.  Note the British troops in uniform marching in formation.  Also, the telltale guard shack sitting in the road on the left was there.     

"Bazar JhikaGali, under snow, Murree Hills" I estimate from about 1931, but it might be later. Notice that the guard shack was still there in the road on the left. That disappears from photos by the time of Partition, and is replaced by another guard shack at the base of Sandes Hill.  

 "Jhika Gali (Murree)" from the base of Sandes Hill, either during or after World War I. Only two permanent buildings appear. The guard shack in the early location is visible.   

Early 1960s. From the photo archives of the Richards family. The sign still reads: 2 miles to Gharial, 4 miles to Bhurban.

This photo is a bit of a mystery.  Called "The Forest Road," it was also by Samuel Bourne, and also from 1864. It was taken in Murree somewhere. But it looks hauntingly like that first curve as you drive from the school toward Jhika.  The roads would have been later widened for vehicular traffic, so it could not look exactly as we saw it. At the very least, you get an idea of what the forests in that area looked like before all the people arrived. There are reports of tigers in those forests from the mid to late 1800s. The picture could also have been taken somewhere along the road from Jhika to Kuldana, or it could be somewhere along the forest trail that went down from Mall Road and joined the Kuldana Road about one-quarter mile before it arrived at Jhika Gali.  But I personally think it is along the stretch from our School in Gharial to Jhika.  But in 1864, there was no Jhika, and there was no school building, and Kuldana and Gharial camps were nothing more than seasonal tent cities with no permanent structures whatsoever.