British Residency, Lucknow

The British Residency is a ruined compound on Residency Road in the Qaisar Bagh area of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Construction began under Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula of Awadh around 1780 and was completed under his successor Saadat Ali Khan, to house the British Resident, the East India Company's representative at the Awadh court. Over time the compound grew into a cluster of residences, a banqueting hall, a treasury, a church and other buildings on a high ground near the Gomti river. In 1857, during the Indian uprising, it became the scene of one of the best-known sieges of the period.

The siege began at the end of June 1857 and lasted until November. The garrison and civilians, numbering in the low thousands, sheltered inside the compound against a much larger force of rebel soldiers and local fighters. Sir Henry Lawrence, the Chief Commissioner, was mortally wounded in early July and died shortly afterward. A first relief column under Henry Havelock and James Outram reached the Residency in September but could not break out, and a second relief under Colin Campbell evacuated the survivors in November 1857. The site was then kept in its battered state as a memorial.

Today the Archaeological Survey of India preserves the ruins as left after the siege. Walls still show cannon-ball and musket damage. The main building houses a small museum with models, paintings and photographs of the siege, and the underground rooms called tykhanas that sheltered women and children can be entered. The cemetery next to the ruined St Mary's Church holds graves of those who died, including Sir Henry Lawrence, whose epitaph is widely quoted. The grounds are laid out as lawns with shaded paths, and a flag mast marks the spot where the Union flag was reportedly kept flying during the siege. The compound contains the remains of the Banqueting Hall, the Treasury, the Begum Kothi and the Doctor Fayrer's House, which allows a roughly chronological reading from Nawabi construction to the British garrison story. For Indian visitors the site is also read as a place of the 1857 revolt against Company rule, so interpretations differ.