The Old Protestant Cemetery on Northam Road is a small walled garden of weathered tombstones and frangipani trees that holds the graves of many of Penang's British and European founders. Captain Francis Light, the East India Company captain who claimed the island in 1786, is buried here under a simple stone (he died of malaria in 1794). His Eurasian widow Martina Rozells, the founder of the local Eurasian community, lies nearby.
Around 500 graves survive from the 1789-1892 active period, many of them children and young settlers cut down by tropical disease — the average age of death on the inscriptions is shockingly young. Officers, merchants, planters, missionaries and their families fill the rest. The cemetery was nearly lost to neglect in the late 20th century before being restored by the Penang Heritage Trust. It is a quiet, shaded retreat from the heat of central Georgetown and an unusually moving small site. Free entry, open daylight hours.