Kalikata

A handful of merchants began their operations by building a few factories near the coastal area, one of which was established near the fishing village Kalikata, which was about a hundred miles above the mouth of the Ganges, known as Hooghly.

[1] English trader Job Charnock landed at Sutanuti on 24 August 1690 with the objective of establishing the East India Company's Bengal headquarters.

Legal title was eventually secured on 10 November 1698 when Charles Eyre, Job Charnock's son-in-law and ultimate successor, acquired the zemindari (land-holding) rights from the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family, the zemindars (landlords) of the area.

[4] The Sabarna Roy Choudhury's own tenure of the three villages – Kalikata, Sutanuti, and Gobindapur – is thus of uncertain duration, although in 1698, they were certainly the zemindars, or landlords, with their lands acquired through some sort of grant or lease from the Mughal emperors.

[6] Kalikata was called "Calcutta" by the British and the metropolis that grew around it acquired that name; it was renamed Kolkata in 2001, following colloquial Bengali.

In the centre was the Lall Dighi, or great Tank, which has been in existence before the coming of Charnock within what was the cutcherry (court-house) of the former zemindars (landlords)… There was no Strand Road, and the waves of the Hooghly lapped the ramparts of the Fort.

To the south there extended from Koila Ghat to Chandpal Ghat the mouth of a creek, navigable for large boats, which passed along Hastings Street and made way through Creek Row and Wellington Square to Beliaghata near the Salt Lakes… Beyond Chitpore Road, which formed the eastern boundary of the settlement, lay more pools, swamps and rice-fields, dotted here and there with the struggling huts of fishermen, falconers, wood-cutters, weavers and cultivators.

[11] The most important public buildings and imposing private houses lined the northern side of the Esplanade, facing the Maidan on the south.