Trees have been cut and tombstones painted black at the South Park Street Cemetery.

Several freshly cut tree stumps along with logs and wood were seen strewn across the cemetery on two visits last week.

The southwest corner of the cemetery that borders the Rawdon Street parkomat had a heap of logs.

The tombstones on the graves at the cemetery, which were reportedly being cleaned a month ago, are now painted black.

The cemetery manager, Partha Sarkar, said they were attempting to restore the tombstones.

Asked about the felling of trees, Sarkar said: “We had to cut trees because they were damaging the graves.”

However, most of the stumps and the piled-up logs were found on vacant land.

Margaret Ekka, office secretary of the Christian Burial Board (CBB) that owns the cemetery, said a couple of trees had to be removed because they were infested.

“We tried everything to save the trees. We were taking the help of the Indian Botanical Garden, too. But the trees could not be kept. They would have fallen any time and damaged the tombs,” Ekka said.

Asked about the cut trees on vacant land, she said: “There may not be tombs over the ground but the graves are there underneath.”

On the blackening of tombstones, Ekka said: “An agency approached us (the CBB) with a proposal to clean the tombstones. Since they have done so much restoration work in the city, we decided to allow them to clean the tombstones. But they seem to have used a black polish or pigment that caused the blackening of the tombstones. We are going to reverse the process and restore the headstones to their original condition. We are consulting archaeological engineers.”

A few tombs at the South Park Street Cemetery had been restored by Reach Foundation, a Chennai-based non-profit working on heritage, about two years ago. Former Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) engineer Tapan Bhattacharya had supervised the restoration process.

Ekka has consulted Bhattacharya regarding the restoration of the headstones.

“I think someone used a black pigment to paint the headstones. I think it can be removed gently,” said Bhattacharya.

The cemetery, which has about 1,600 tombs, is one of the oldest non-Church cemeteries in the world.

The tombs combine a variation of Greco-Roman, Gothic and Indo-Sarcenic elements, imparting the cemetery its uniqueness. The cemetery has the tombs of 19th-century poet and educator Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Asiatic Society founder William Jones, General Charles Stewart, more commonly known as Hindoo Stewart, whose tomb with its Odishan influence of Reki Deul and other elements make it unique.