15 Facts About Frederic Growse

Frederic Salmon Growse was a British civil servant of the Indian Civil Service, Hindi scholar, archaeologist and collector, who served in Mainpur, Mathura, Bulandshahr and Fatehpur during British rule in India.

Frederic Growse wrote Mathura: A district memoir and a description of the district of Bulandshahr and of its new architecture.

Frederic Growse was born in 1836 in Bildeston, Suffolk, England, the third and youngest son of Robert and Mary Growse.

Frederic Growse matriculated from Oriel College in 1855 and then gained a scholarship at Queen's College, Oxford, from where he received a master's degree after being in the first class of moderations and second class of classics.

In November 1877 Frederic Growse was appointed district magistrate and deputy collector at Bulandshahr and in 1878 made Bulandshahr's Magistrate and Collector.

At Bulandshahr between 1878 and 1884 Frederic Growse caused a number of buildings to be constructed using native designs and craftsmen which he saw as more in keeping with his "Gothic principles" than the utilitarian colonial buildings preferred by the Public Works Department.

Frederic Growse encouraged and assisted in the construction of the Bathing Ghat, Garden Gate and the Town Hall.

Frederic Growse was one of a few self-professed historians who held the view that Indian architecture was produced through patronage, and achieved by trust rather than written contracts.

Frederic Growse's work was praised by John Lockwood Kipling in The Journal of Indian Art.

Frederic Growse was district magistrate and collector at Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, from 1885 to 1886 where he produced a supplement to the Fatehpur Gazetteer, paying particular attention to architecture and archaeology which had been largely ignored by the author of the original gazetteer in 1884 who Frederic Growse thought had probably not visited any of the places about which he had written, relying instead on native informants who were not equipped to comment on such matters.

Frederic Growse donated a collection of Indian pottery to the British Museum in 1882.

In 1868 at Mainpur, Frederic Growse produced an article on the Prithviraj Raso, a poem about the 12th-century Hindu Emperor, Prithviraj Chauhan.

Frederic Growse published a revised version in 1880 as a four-volume second edition and published a full version in 1883.

Frederic Growse updated and revised their volume of materials on the history of the Suffolk parish of Bildeston in 1891 which was published in 1892.

Frederic Growse died from tuberculosis at Haslemere, Surrey, on 19 May 1893.