Experts’ help needed to keep ‘Old Palace’ from falling

The Old Palace of the Kings of Kandy is in dander of collapsing

The plaque giving details of the US grant that’ll be used for the rehabilitation of this unique building 

The time has come for architects, artisans, engineers and all those in the field of construction and architecture -regardless whether they have the knowledge of archaeology or not- to put their heads together to prevent the ‘Old Palace’ from falling to pieces.
The department of Irrigation and the Department of         Archeology department alone would not be able to handle this challenge of keeping the Old Palace of the Kings of Kandy from collapsing.

The Old Palace has a history dating back to the 16th Century from the time of Wimaladharmasuriya who built the first “Vedihiti “ building for the Sacred Tooth Relic. This king ruled Kandy for twelve years. During the same period of time he would have built the palace for himself to reside, so that he could worship the Tooth Relic daily. Thereafter Kings may have lived there and also King Senerath, who ruled Kandy for thirty years, and lastly Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe who from this building ordered the beheading of the children of  Keppetipola at the ‘Deva Shanhinda’. The centre of the two roads is before Maha Vishnu Devale and Natha Devale.  
Coming back to the Old Palace, after the Treaty of 1815, Sir John D’Oyly used firstly the Octagon as his Office and later shifted on to the Old Palace, where he lived until his death.  In later years he never came out of the Old Palace even to meet Army Officers and he maintained that the British did not keep the promises made to the Kandy People.
This shows the history of the Old Palace. The US Ambassador’s fund had granted 52 million rupees for the rehabilitation of this unique building this year. (See the Plaque which gives details of this event)
It must be mentioned in this column that it is alleged that the remains of Fr. Joseph Vaz were found in a pit dug on Yatinuwara Veediya during the water pipe laying period by ‘Socoman’. The water pipes were shifted to this Old Palace, which was also visited by then President J.R.Jayewardene.
This building has history engulfing the Kandy Period as well as a repository of history and culture for the future generations.   The building should be preserved for posterity.
An architect whom this writer met when the photographs were removed, around two days ago, pointed out that there are no outlets where the water in the earth could come out from the side of the Old Palace. When one studies this aspect, it is true.
However, one cannot leave this building in the hands of only two agencies and therefore, all experts should get together and solve this problem as much as the Octagon was saved from being broken by a Civil Engineer from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Peradeniya.