An artist's impression of the Serampore Printing Office before the fire of 1811.

The 3D drawing is based on a description provided by John Clark Marshman in 'The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward' and has been drawn to scale.

Ward's office, in which the deeds and important Mission papers were kept, was probably the one on the front left. The room housing the printing machines largely escaped the fire, but the composing and typecasting room on the other side, where the type and the matrixes were kept, was seriously damaged. I have included the foundry (which would have had a furnace) at the far end of the building, together with a paper store.

The whole building would probably have been constructed on stilts to raise it about four feet off the ground (just like Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta) to avoid the expected annual monsoon flooding. The building was constructed as a warehouse before the missionaries arrived, and such protection would have been a necessity to protect valuable export goods.

I have allowed for the same frequency of windows as appear on the Old Mission Chapel, and used the same style of window shutters (they were also used at BMP). The shutters were often closed to keep the oppressive heat of summer out, and the angled slats allowed whatever breezes there were to still get through and ventilate the building.