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Monday, July 14, 2025

Chaguanas Mayor says talks to begin on Lion House restoration

by

Shastri Boodan
37 days ago
20250607
Chaguanas Borough Corporation workers clear the bush around the famous Lion House in Chaguanas.

Chaguanas Borough Corporation workers clear the bush around the famous Lion House in Chaguanas.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed says rel­a­tives of Suren Capildeo, SC, who in­her­it­ed the his­toric Li­on House, have reached out to the Na­tion­al Trust to ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sions about the build­ing’s fu­ture.

“We are go­ing to have a meet­ing next week with the Na­tion­al Trust and mem­bers of the Capildeo fam­i­ly,” Mo­hammed said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this week.

“The fam­i­ly has reached out, and meet­ing with them is the most im­por­tant step. Many peo­ple wrong­ly be­lieve that Gov­ern­ment can sim­ply in­ter­vene even though the prop­er­ty is pri­vate­ly owned. We want to have a dis­cus­sion with the fam­i­ly and take it from there.”

Capildeo, who was a politi­cian, le­gal lu­mi­nary and ad­vo­cate, was the grand­son of Pun­dit Capildeo, who con­struct­ed Li­on House. He was al­so the cousin of late No­bel Lau­re­ate VS Naipaul, who im­mor­talised Li­on House in his nov­el a House for Mr Biswas af­ter he lived there for a time.

Mo­hammed, who has been lob­by­ing for the build­ing’s restora­tion since 2020, re­vealed that on Thurs­day, the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion be­gan clear­ing bush­es from the ex­te­ri­or of Li­on House. He ex­plained that the cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived per­mis­sion to clear vines and ex­ter­nal veg­e­ta­tion but was not au­tho­rised to en­ter the build­ing to re­move de­bris or rub­bish, some of which may have been left by home­less in­di­vid­u­als who sought shel­ter in­side.

Mo­hammed said he in­tends to work along­side the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er stake­hold­ers to se­cure fund­ing for the restora­tion.

“Restora­tion de­pends on fund­ing,” he not­ed.

The Li­on House, lo­cat­ed in Ch­agua­nas, is the an­ces­tral home of the Capildeo fam­i­ly and is re­gard­ed as the on­ly struc­ture of its kind in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. It was built by the late Pun­dit Capildeo, a for­mer in­den­tured labour­er who rose to be­come a re­spect­ed Hin­du priest in Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Trust, the build­ing stands as a last­ing sym­bol and memo­r­i­al to the thou­sands of In­di­an in­den­tured im­mi­grants who ar­rived in Trinidad be­tween 1845 and 1917.

Born in 1873 in Ma­hadev Dubey, a vil­lage in the state of Ut­tar Pradesh, East-Cen­tral In­dia, Pun­dit Capildeo broke the bonds of in­den­ture­ship and be­came a lead­ing spir­i­tu­al fig­ure in the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty. In 1924, he be­gan con­struct­ing the Li­on House, which was com­plet­ed in 1926 and named Anand Bha­van, mean­ing Man­sion of Bliss. That same year, he left for In­dia on one of his many trips and sad­ly passed away dur­ing the vis­it, nev­er re­turn­ing to Trinidad.


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