EVOLUTION OF THE

COLONIAL
BUNGALOW
THE COLONIAL BUNGALOW IN INDIA
‘’……As I count each single shingle
On my bosky bungalow.
There’s a jingle in the jungle,
I am counting every nail,
And my mind is bungaloaded,
Bungaloping down a trail;
And I dream of every ingle…...’’
- Burgess Johnson, 1909

When the British came to India, working and living in an alien climate meant the need for
appropriate spaces. As much of their work involved interacting with ‘natives’ in villages and rural
areas, life under canvas for weeks on end became the norm. According to Anthony D. King,
who has researched extensively into the origins of the bungalow, the earliest ‘banggolo’ was a
peasant’s hut in rural Bengal. Based on this prototype, by the last quarter of the 18th century a
new form of dwelling with a pyramidal thatched roof and kuccha (usually mud) walls was
constructed.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans in Bengal, prior to having their own more permanent
buildings constructed, or when travelling "up country", would sometimes use such locally built
shelters in addition to their own tents. The main features of these shelters like the ‘chauyari’
were the single storey, thatched roof, raised mud plinth, the square or sometimes oblong plan
and veranda formed by the supports under the overhanging roof. 

Bungalow comes from the Hindi and Urdu baṅ glā and banglā, words which mean,
literally, “in the Bengal style (of a house).” In its original use  bungalow referred
specifically to a lightly-built single-story house, usually with a thatched roof, found in
the Far East.
- Merriam Webster Dictionary

Above: The Bengali hut and its pavilion structure

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The British developed the new house type, the bungalow, as an alternative dwelling type for the
subcontinent, from where it would subsequently spread to the rest of the world. The bungalow’s
design evolved as a type over a hundred years. The bungalow appears to have dual origins: the
detached rural Bengal house sitting in its compound (from the word root bangla – from Bengal),
and the British suburban villa.  It was a fusion of these two types that led to a building form that
we see today.

An 1847 description cited by George Edwards (1907) describes what the bungalow of that era
was- ‘’ (A detached house) built for the most part of unbaked bricks and covered with thatch,
having in the centre a hall, the whole being encompassed by an open veranda.

Above: A typical colonial bungalow Above: A colonial bungalow in Bangalore

Monkey tops

The roots of the bungalow in India lies with the British designing a standardised and permanent
dwelling based on indigenous domestic structures for the East India Company. The basic model
was adopted with modifications everywhere under British.

The bungalow, though initially designed for an alien people, reflected the cultural bases of the
Indian population among whom it was found.

The typical residential bungalow was set in extensive grounds away from the road by a walled
compound. This ensured privacy and marked a distance from the Indian world around.
The amount of land enclosed was a symbol of status. For a senior officer a ratio of 15:1, garden
to build form, was appropriate, while for a beginning rank it could even be 1:1. 

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The early bungalows were austere, with simple volumes and a stark whitewashed finish. They
had long, low classical lines and detailing. This basic model developed into a more European
classical form in outward appearance as time passed. It was symmetrical in form and largely so
in spatial organisation. It had a hall in the centre and rooms on each side of the hall, and a
veranda in front facing the garden and sometimes also on both sides. The kitchen and servants’
quarters were separate in most instances. The pitched roof and surrounding veranda kept the
bungalow cool in the summer months.

Above: Early colonial Bungalow

William Hodges provided an accurate description in 1793- ‘’Bungalows were generally raised on
a base of brick, one, two or three feet from the ground, and consist of only one storey; the plan
of them usually is a large room in the centre for an eating and sitting room, and rooms at each
corner for sleeping; the whole is covered with one general thatch, which comes low to each
side; the spaces between the angle rooms are verandas or open porticos to sit in during the
evenings; the centre hall is lighted from the sides with windows and a large door in the centre.
Sometimes the centre verandas at each end are converted into rooms.’’

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 Above; left: Elevation and plan of Bungalow

More elaborate types emerged on the scene in the nineteenth century to indicate the superior
social position of its British owners. The veranda also disappeared from the sides and remained
only in the front and at times in the back. The bungalow with its Doric, and later Tuscan,
columns on the facade holding up the roof became a symbol of not only the evolution of the
Indian prototype into a European building form but also of the commercial and the military might
of Britain. The labour of building the bungalows was supplied by Indian craftsmen and
contractors. Therefore, the physical fabric of the bungalow remained rooted in Indian
architectural traditions in spite of changes in the construction materials, technology and
practices.

Right: a colonial Bungalow in Bangalore

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 Above: Elevation and section through a later Bungalow

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 Above: Abstracted plan forms

In its later version, the Gothic revival in England brought about a corresponding change in
bungalow design – spawning buildings with pitched roofs and richly carpentered details
including such features as the ‘monkey tops’ of Bangalore, as seen below.

Above, right: Monkey tops

Different cities and towns in India had regional variations of bungalows.

Above: a bungalow in Shimla

Above: Bungalow in Mumbai

Right: Garden house in
Chennai

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During the twentieth century, these bungalows went through stylistic and technological
transformations while responding to socio-economic changes. Internal forces arising from the
freedom struggle against British colonial rule and the making of New Delhi, affected their
design. In addition, influences from continental Europe and America resulted in the adoption of
Art Deco and Streamline Modern features, followed by the International Style. With the arrival of
Le Corbusier, the principles of the Modern Movement dominated the post-Independence Era
Thus, the simple cantonment bungalow finally terminated in the modernist house.

REFERENCES
- British Colonial Architecture: Towns, Cantonments & Bungalows- Ashish Nangia
- The Raj on the Move- Rajika Bhandari
- MONKEY TOPS: Idings in Bangalore Cantonment- Elizabeth Staley
- ANECDOTE OF BENGAL VERNACULAR SPACES Ashik Vaskor Mannan
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungalow
- The Bungalow: A Short History- PATRICIA POORE
- The adaptation and the growth of the Bungalow in India
- A LIFE IN BUNGALOWS- Close encounters of the colonial kind- Malavika Karlekar
- The Bungalow- An Indian Contribution to the West- Anthony King
- The Bungalow in Twentieth-Century India: The Cultural Expression of Changing… - Madhavi Desai, Miki
Desai, Jon Lang
- http://ncerttextbooks.in/chapter/English/Class+12/179/History+-+Themes+in+Indian+History-
III/2175/12+COLONIAL+CITIES+-+Urbanisation,+Planning.html
- The colonial bungalow in India- Madhavi Desai

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