FORGOTTEN CORFU 3: Kyprou street commemorative post

As somebody walking down Kyprou street (Cyprus street)in Garitsa, may his/her eye catch a billingual old street sign post, just across the primary school.



This post has a monumental shape and bear a plague on where somebody can read the following text, written in Greek and English:  

"ΟΔΟΣ ΟΥΑΡΔ, ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΑΣΘΕΙΣΑ ΥΠΟ ΤΩΝ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΣΩΦΡΟΝΙΣΤΗΡΙΩ ΔΕΣΜΙΩΝ ΕΝ ΕΤΕΙ ΑΩΝΔ"

"WARD'S ROAD, MADE BY THE PRISONER'S OF THE PENITENTIARY IN THE YEAR 1854" 



Unfortunately, this ancient post is vandalized by some mindless and spoilt "anarchic" youths who have drawn an anarchic symbol with a black paint on the monument's plague. But it is, indeed another remnant of the british occupation (1812-1864).

 

By the time that post was erected, Garitsa was a suburb of Corfu Town (or "borgo" in the local idiom) which was considerably smaller than the present day settlement and was not merged with the capital, as it is today. I reckon that the British called the street "Ward's Road" from the english word "ward", which means "a division of a city, a borough". Garitsa, as a suburb, always was one of the various divisions of Corfu Town (like Mantouki, Anemomylos, Stratia, Koulines, Sarroco etc.). Also, as being the old peripheric road, it acted as a frontier between Garitsa and the other divisions of the old town.