The
East India Company obtained from the
Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar, in 1717, the right to rent from 38 villages surrounding their settlement. Of these 5 lay across the
Hooghly in what is now Howrah district. The remaining 33 villages were on the Calcutta side. After the fall of
Siraj-ud-daulah, the last independent
Nawab of Bengal, it purchased these villages in 1758 from
Mir Jafar and reorganised them. These villages were known en-bloc as
Dihi Panchannagram and Cossipore was one of them. It was considered to be a suburb beyond the limits of the
Maratha Ditch.
H. E. A. Cotton writes, "The Cossipore Reach was one of the finest on the river, and is lined by a number of villa residences." From those days Cossipore had a number of industrial units. – the Government Gun Foundry, the Snider and Rifle Shell factories (originally constructed by Colonel Hutchinson), sugar mills and jute screw houses.
Entally,
Manicktala,
Beliaghata,
Ultadanga,
Chitpur, Cossipore, parts of
Beniapukur,
Ballygunge,
Watgunge and Ekbalpur and parts of
Garden Reach and
Tollygunj were added to Kolkata Municipal Corporation in 1888. Garden Reach was later taken out. ==Geography==