Kenmore Kirk

In Kenmore graveyard lies a rather unusual memorial - to the infant son of the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire.

 

Maharajah Duleep Singh was born in 1838 in Lahore. 

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His father was Maharajah Ranjit Singh and he was Singh’s youngest son, and the only child of Maharanee Jind Kaur. ​

 

After the death of his father, Duleep Singh lived with his mother until on 16 September 1843, at the age of five, he was proclaimed Maharajah. 

 

​He was deposed at the age of 10, and in May 1854 was sent into exile in England.  

 

In 1855 he moved to Castle Menzies, near Kenmore, which had been leased for him, and spent the rest of his teens there. 

 

In 1858 he rented Auchlyne House, near Killin, from the Earl of Breadalbane.  Later, in the 1860s he moved to Grandtully Castle, Grandtully, Perthshire. 

 

Bamba Muller, at aged 15, married Maharajah Duleep Singh’s in Egypt in 1864. She was born in Cairo in 1848, the daughter of Ludwig Muller, a married German merchant banker, and his Abyssinian mistress Sofia.  

 

The first child of The Maharajah Duleep Singh and The Maharanee was born at 3 am on 4 July 1865 at Loch Kennard Lodge, Grandtully in the parish of Dull, Perthshire.  The birth record shows that the baby boy was not given a name.  

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The infant was premature and died in the early hours of the following  day, 5 July 1865.    

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From the mid-1860s, the Maharajah moved his family home to Elveden Hall in Suffolk.  

 

The couple had six more children, three boys and three girls, born between 1866 and 1879.  

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Maharanee Bamba Muller died on 18 September 1887. ​Maharajah Singh went on to marry Ada Douglas Wetherill in 1889 and had two more children.  

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The Maharajah died in Paris, France on 22 October 1893 and is buried beside his first wife in the churchyard at Elveden. 

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All eight of his children died without children, so ending the direct line of Sikh Royalty. ​

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​The Malaysian Sridasmesh Sikh Pipe Band now regularly visit the infant's grave as part of their tour of the Scottish Sikh Heritage Trail.