One flaw meant this 1786 granary could never open its doors if fully filled

Built entirely of brick and lime mortar without a single supporting pillar, Golghar in Patna remains an engineering feat. Rising 29 metres high, with walls 3.6 metres thick at the base, it was designed to store up to 1,40,000 tonnes of grain, with workers expected to climb one of its twin spiral staircases, pour grain through an opening at the top and descend using the other staircase.

The granary was built in 1786 by Captain John Garstin, an architect and engineer of the East India Company, on the orders of the then governor general of India, Warren Hastings, following the devastating Bengal famine of 1770, in which historians estimate nearly one crore people died.

But the ambitious project was undone by a basic engineering oversight. All four doors of the granary were designed to open inwards. ‘If the granary had ever been filled to capacity, the enormous pressure of the grain would have made it impossible to open the doors,’ said Indologist Prabuddh Biswas, meaning the structure could never function as a fully operational famine reserve.

After Independence, the Food Corporation of India used Golghar as a godown till 1998 before vacating it. Today, the protected monument has found a new purpose: visitors climb its 145 spiral steps for sweeping views of Patna and the Ganga.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Kumartheharshit