#thinkheritage

#ThinkHeritage 

Sahapedia is conducting India Heritage Walk Festival all over India. These free walks are lead by experts. I attended one of them in February 2019, lead by Ashwini Nawathe. This entire blog excluding photos are based on the Synposis on Sion, written by Ashwini herself. 

I also attended another heritage walk around town side of Mumbai, arranged by Sahapedia during the IHWF. Also check out my other heritage walk of the Bombay Fort, arranged by IHWF too.

‘Sion’ was the boundary between the island of Bombay and Salsette. Sion was known as Shiv pronounced as ‘Sheo’, ‘Seo’, ‘Seu’ or ‘Siv’.

It is also believed that this Church, situated near the Sion Railway station was built and named after the “Mount Zion” in Jeruselum. Zion became Sion.

“Sion” in Hebrew means “the highest point”, as Sion had a lot of hills and hillocks over looking the island of Bombay may be this area was called as “Sion”.

We climbed 2 such hills and Ashwini enlightened us about the heritage history of Sion.

The iron of this decorative grill was sourced from the GIPR!

The hills of Sion have been demolished to make way for the development and one can still see their remnants. The last few steps may have belonged to the watch tower that once was here.

Sion is the only place in Mumbai which has 3 railway stations nearby, namely Sion railway station on Central railway line, King Circle  railway station on Harbour line & Guru Teg Bahadur GTB  railway station on Harbour line.

This was the last house of Mumbai then and then there was marshy land covered by sea during high tide beyond this house.

This is a rare kind of temple with 2 kalash!

An ancient fire alarm in disuse now, that had to be cranked and then the siren / alarm used to ring at the fire station. Its mechanism of usage was described by Ashwini’s father to our enthusiastic group of around 30.

This is the only place in Mumbai where the name of Duncan Causeway (the road connecting Sion to Island of Salsette) is mentioned. 

We also found the VIII & IX Milestones somewhere near, preserved by Ashwini’s efforts.

Now let us peep into a World War structure - Garrison or an Ammunition dump:

It is fortified and so strong, that it cannot be demolished even now! Earlier it was so tall, that you could not touch its ceiling. But now after development & redevelopment, it seems to have sunk.

Iron clad window of the Garrison.

The Sion Fort is the tallest point of Mumbai, and one can look all around from here, if there was no haze and skyscrapers around now.

These are original construction materials that were used in building the Sion fort.