BASRI SHAH MOSQUE ... Oldest Mosque of Kolkata !!

Winter is almost here and so is the season of Calcutta's Heritage Hunts, organized every year by different clubs, motoring enthusiasts' associations and media houses. Being the defending champion of City's two most prestigious treasure hunts, we have already started to polish our Heritage IQ and gearing up for the brain storming trails in the coming months. Two weeks ago, in one of those random chit chats with my fellow hunter Abhijit and Souvik, we were discussing about the 'OLDEST's of the City. We jotted down the following :

• Oldest Existing Building - Dum Dum Clive House
• Oldest Temple - Kalighat or Chitteswari ??
• Oldest Church - Armenian Church
• Oldest Synagogue - Neveh Shalome Synagogue
• Oldest Mosque - ???...

We were clueless and as the last resort, googled it. An online newspaper report revealed that the City's oldest existing Mosque is in Kashipur and known as BHONSRI SHAH MOSQUE but not much description was there. Further research in the topic led us to the Graded List of Heritage Buildings of Kolkata compiled by Kolkata Municipal Corporation and we indeed found an entry in the heritage list of Ward 6 (i.e. Kashipur Area) that describes an unnamed Category I Heritage Mosque as "Popularly known as 1, Lockgate Road".

And we decided to pay a visit...