Montagu Burrows

Sir Stephen Montagu Burrows CIE (26 December 1856 – 4 March 1935) was a British amateur historian, author and Ceylonese civil servant. Stephen Montagu Burrows was born in Headington, Oxfordshire, England on 26 December 1856, the second son of Montagu Burrows, a naval historian and professor at Oxford University, and Mary Anna née Whalley-Smythe-Gardiner, daughter of Sir James Whalley Smythe Gardiner, 3rd Baronet. He studied at Eton College and Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies in 1879 and a Master of Arts in 1884. He joined the Ceylon Civil Service in 1880 and was attached to the Kandy Kachcheri. In June 1881, he was appointed the private secretary to Lieutenant-Governor John Douglas and in November was made a Justice of the Peace (JP) and Assistant Coroner for Colombo. On 2 June 1882, he was assigned to the Queen's Advocates' Department. He was made an JP and the additional police magistrate for Galle on 25 August the same year. In 1884 he published the Visitor's Guide to Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. He was appointed as the Assistant Government Agent in the North Central Province, and between 1884 and 1886, he was assigned the responsibility of supervising the archaeological survey of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. He published a book, The Buried Cities of Ceylon in 1885. In June 1887, he was appointed as the Assistant Government Agent for Matale.