Spoiler Alert – This is not a fresh topic, and I have written about it in The Hindu dated March 27, 2012. But last week, during a heritage walk that traced the bounds of the Chepauk Palace in Chennai, I found myself on Victoria Hostel Road, Thiruvallikeni (Triplicane). And that meant a visit to The Lodge was a must.A two-storeyed bungalow of the colonial variety, clad in exposed red brick and with the colonnaded verandah running all around it, it shares a compound with the Victoria Hostel completed in 1900. The hostel itself was built by T. Namberumal Chetty. The Lodge predates it and bears all the hallmarks of RF Chisholm’s design. In the second half of the 19th century, it was the residence of the Principal of the College of Engineering (now CEG and at Guindy), which functioned from Humayun Mahal, one of the wings of Chepauk Palace until the 1930s.The topography of the area has unalterably changed, with the Buckingham Canal dividing the Chepauk Palace bounds. Until the 1880s, there was no Victoria Hostel Road, for the palace, spread over 117 acres, stretched from the Marina to Bells Road in Thiruvallikeni. Work on the canal split the property longitudinally. But by then, the carving up of the Chepauk grounds was already reality.The Nawab’s artillery park was made over to the Presidency College, the saluting battery made way for Senate House and the bathing pavilion (Hasht Bungalow or Marine Villa), became University buildings. The Humayun Mahal was the College of Engineering and the western side, which was the palace’s main entrance, was given to the Madras Cricket Club.With all these stakeholders in place, there was considerable jockeying for space. Lt. Col Henry Davison Love was the Principal of the college, with breaks in between, from 1880 to the early 1900s. During this time, he stayed at The Lodge and was forever involved in a battle to expand the space occupied by his college. He eyed the MCC land and kept asking for bits and pieces of it, for sports facilities, chiefly cricket and tennis. The MCC was terrified of his interloping, particularly as its boundaries were not yet clearly defined. And what was more, seeing Love at it, others began asking for parts of the MCC as well.