8 Striking Lost Cities and Structures Reclaimed by Nature

8. Ross Island, India

The former colonial centre of Ross Island is now largely abandoned. Here, a derelict building is covered with tree roots. Ross Island, Andaman Islands, India.

Image Credit: Matyas Rehak / Shutterstock

While India was under British colonial rule, Ross Island in the Indian Ocean was used as a British penal colony. There, thousands of people were imprisoned in what were, by all accounts, gruelling conditions. In 1858, after the Indian Mutiny, for example, many of those arrested for rebelling against British rule were sent to the newly established penal colony on Ross Island.

But Ross Island was not exclusively home to a prison: prisoners were forced to regularly strip the island’s thick forests so that its colonial overseers could live in relative luxury on the island. The British abandoned Ross Island during World War Two, fearing the approach of Japanese forces. The prison was then permanently closed shortly after the war ended, and without the prisoners there clearing the greenery, the island was consumed by the forest once again.