Aldeen House & Henry Martyn’s Pagoda (the riverside “oratory”)

For a more haunting (and often overlooked) layer of Serampore, seek out the Aldeen House precinct and the structure popularly known as Henry Martyn’s Pagoda, an older shrine later used as a secluded place of prayer by the Anglican missionary Henry Martyn in the early 1800s, associated with David Brown’s Aldeen House circle. Aldeen House itself is historically significant as the early base where the first batch of Serampore College students studied before the college shifted to its present campus in 1821.  Note that the “pagoda” is no longer simply an abandoned oddity: it has undergone restoration and conservation (2018–2020) under the Government of West Bengal’s archaeology/museums directorate, and access/visibility can depend on local conditions.