Nainital O --Five

According to the Thornton report of 1850, there were around 121 Hindi and Sanskrit medium schools run by natives in Kumaon region. However, according to Mr Traille, the fabled Commissioner of Kumaon during the Company period, in 1823 Kumaon had no public institutions of the nature of schools. Children from upper caste families ( read only males) were given tuitions by Brahmin tutors who gave their pupils the basic reading, writing and accounting skills in the vernacular. More advanced students were sent to Banaras for studying Sanskrit .
The first school the British set up was in Srinagar in Garhwal in 1840.  But in the psot Ghadar period when Nainital became the summer headquarters of the North Western Provinces, that Nainital began to develop as a good centre for schooling. In the beginning of the Twentieth Century when the new Government House in Nainital was completed and the Lt Governor moved in, schools began to flourish.
Rethinking about constructions began after the disastrous landslide of 1880 and that included the house built for the Lt Governor on Sher Ka Danda in 1879. It had developed cracks that were deemed to be serious enough for the house to be vacated. In 1896 after much bureaucratic bickering over costs involved, the Government in Kolkata finally sanctioned the building of a new Government House. Mr FW Stevens the eminent architect from Bombay who had also built the Victoria Terminus was authorised to build it. His original blueprint was modified to bring it within the purview of  the permissible financial ceiling ( Rs 5 Lakhs). Electricity was installed later by Mssrs Balmer Lawrie of Calcutta and the furniture was made by Mssrs Lazarus and Co of Calcutta and Mssrs Maple and Co of London. The carpets were woven by craftsmen lodged in Agra, Lucknow and Fatehgarh jails.
(concluded)