The Bangher Raja’s Fort at Urwa

The Bangher Raja’s fort once stood midway between Sultan Battery and Pentland Pet Road, to the west of the Mangalore-Kulur Road, close to site where of the coffee curing works of A. J. Saldanha & Sons had been built. The fort occupied a square plot of ground, about 100 metres in length. The fort was destroyed in December 1619 under orders from the Ikkeri ruler Venkatappa Nakaya. Its ruins were still visible in the last century.

Bangher Fort Plan

The ruins revealed the square layout had seven bastions, 5 metres in diameter, one in each corner and in the middle of the south, west, and north walls. A single gate on the eastern wall provided access to the fort. Here a small temple had been built. Nearly 350 metres of the southern, western and northern walls were still standing in a more or less good condition until about a century ago. Constructed of earth and laterite, they were between 8 to 9 metres high.

The northern wall between bastions 2 and 3 was about 4 metres broad at the top unlike all other walls of the fort. The northern half of the eastern wall had been completely levelled to the ground. The walls were enclosed by a ditch or moat estimated to be 6 metres deep and 6 metres wide. A narrow passage (P), about a metre wide, cut through solid laterite, near bastion 6 may have brought water from the river. In the very centre of the fort, stood a little mound covered with fragments of old stones. This may have been the site of the main building of the fort.

The fort was known locally as Muttathu Kote (the fort of the mutt). This temple stood outside the eastern fort wall, adjacent to the gate (T). It was dedicated to Shiva and belonged to Lingayats sect. The temple used to receive and annual grant of Rs 100 from the governrnent.

Although the fort was destroyed in 1619, that some of its walls, subject to the heavy annual monsoon showers of the West Coast, were still standing 300 years later is testimony of the strength of its construction and the technology used in building mud and laterite forts four centuries ago.

[1] Varkey C.J. The Bangher Fort of Mangalore, The Mangalore Magazine, 1919: 6-10