History
One of the oldest parts of the city, Kidderpore has a funny legend as far as its name is concerned. It is said that some British could not converse in Bengali. Whenever they passed by, their asking in broken Hindi for the directions to the port where their ships used to harbour sounded somewhat like 'kidder-port'. More plausibly, the name is a corruption of Khidrpur or Khizarpur, Khizr/Khidr being the guardian saint of the seas and the delta for the fishing communities in Bengal. This is one of the version behind the nominiclature of the place. In fact, the port has got its name from Lord Kyde, an engineer by profession, in 19 century designed and supervised the lock gate of the port that connects the Hoogly River, so that the tidal difference hoogly water level is isolated from the water level of the port. So the name of port is automatically baptised as Kyderpore or Khidirpur.
The gateway of Kidderpore is at the crossing of Diamond Harbour Road and Gangadhar Banerjee Lane. At that place a roadside restaurant dating from the British era remains, named "Panchubabu's Shop" or "Panchubabur Dokan", one of the landmarks of Kidderpore. The area is also home to quite a few dargahs of Sufi saints like Syed Baba and Shah Warsi Baba, to name a few.
A number of soldiers killed during the 2nd World Wars were buried at the Solana Muslim burial ground.
Even in the field of Indian Literature, this part of Kolkata had produced three jewel poets. They were Rongolal Bandhopadhyay, Hemchandra Bandopadhyay and Michael Madhushudan Dutta. As no other place or locality in West Bengal had ever produced three such poetic maestros together so there is name given to a road to tribute this fact, it is the "Kabitirtha Sarani".
St Thomas school, which is probably one of the oldest and largest (in area) schools of India is situated here. Its history runs for more than 220 years. The entire area donated by the then Raja of Bhukailash Rajbari.
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