Update
26 August 2017 8.20 am

A 2nd tour has been added at 1pm on 9 September 2017.

Details on registration will be posted at 1 pm today.

Update
25 August 2017 9.07 am

Registration for the event has been closed as of 0835 hours, 25 August 2017. All slots have been taken up. Do look out for the next visit in the series, which will be to Old Admiralty House being scheduled for 23 September 2017 at 10 am to 12 pm. More details will be out two weeks before the visit.

The fourth in the series of State Property visits that is being supported by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) will present participants with a rare opportunity to visit the former Changi Hospital.

The details of the visit are as follows:

Date : 9 September 2017
Time : 10 am to 12 noon
Address: 24 Halton Rd Singapore 506997

For this visit, participants will have to be 18 years old and above. For registration, kindly fill the form at this link:

https://goo.gl/forms/Inr83ZS24w0biR7e2 (registration is now closed)

As with other State Property Visits, spaces are limited. Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis and will be closed as soon as available spaces for the visit are taken up. Do register only if you are certain that you are able to make the visit.

Old Changi Hospital

The hospital traces its origins to the Royal Air Force(RAF) Hospital Changi. That was set up in 1947 to serve the then newly established RAF Station, Singapore’s third. The hospital operated out of two Barrack Hill buildings, one of which was actually designated for use as a medical centre in the context of the military camps of today. The buildings were built as part of the Changi garrison’s 1930s vintage Kitchener Barracks, which housed the Royal Engineers. Separated by a flight of 91 steps, it took quite an effort to move from one wing to the other.

Despite its less than ideal layout, the hospital gained a reputation of being one of the best medical facilities in the Far East. It was well liked by those who were warded there with its proximity to the sea. The hospital also played an important role during the Korean War. A ward was set up for use as a stopover for the “Flying Ambulance” service the RAF mounted. The service allowed wounded UN Command troops to be repatriated to their home countries via Singapore and London.

The hospital was also an important maternity hospital that served families with all arms of the military (not just the RAF) who were stationed in Singapore and counted more than 1000 new arrivals during its time as the RAF Hospital. An expansion exercise in 1962 gave the hospital a third block.

RAF Hospital Changi became the ANZUK Military Hospital following the 1971 pullout of British forces, then the UK Military Hospital, the SAF Hospital, and finally Changi Hospital. It closed in 1997 and the buildings have been left empty since. I will be sharing more on the hospital, its buildings and the history of the Changi garrison during the visit.

Update
26 August 2017 1.15 pm

Registration for the 2nd run of the event has been closed as of 1312 hours, 26 August 2017. All slots have been taken up.

Do look out for the next visit in the series, which will be to Old Admiralty House being scheduled for 23 September 2017 at 10 am to 12 pm. More details will be out two weeks before the visit.

Due to popular demand, a second run of the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets visit to Old Changi Hospital will be held at 1 pm on 9 September 2017.

To register please fill this form in: https://goo.gl/forms/2a5jttFT7KNM7IdH2

Update
1 September 2017 4.25 pm

Registration for the event has been closed as of 1621 hours, 1 September 2017. All slots have been taken up.

Do look out for the next visit in the series, which will be to the former Central Police Station (Beach Road Police Station) scheduled for 7 October 2017 at 10 am to 12 noon. More details will be released two weeks before the visit.

The fifth visit in the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets State Property Visits at takes us to the only tenanted property in the series, Old Admiralty House, at 345 Old Nelson Road, Singapore 758692. This visit is supported by Furen International School (FIS), the property’s occupant, and the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).

Visit details
Date: Saturday 16 September 2017
Time: Session 1: 9 to 9.45 am; Session 2: 10 to 10.45 am
Address: 345 Old Nelson Road, Singapore 758692
Participants should be of ages 12 and above.

Registration link for Session 1, 9 to 9.45 am:
https://goo.gl/forms/9Iom36FbbYfsLSFb2

Registration link for Session 2, 10 to 10.45 am:
https://goo.gl/forms/3TGG1oy2ppyyNUMh1

Registrations are on a first-come-first-served basis and will close for each session when all spaces are taken up.

Old Admiralty House, perched atop the last forested hill in Sembawang.

Background to Old Admiralty House

The façade of the lovely Arts and Crafts Movement inspired house.

Built at the end of the 1930s as one of three intended residences for the most senior commanders of the British military’s three arms, the lovely Arts and Crafts styled house sits atop a hill situated at the edge of the Admiralty’s massive Naval Base. Meant to house the Commander of His Majesty’s Naval Establishments in Singapore, it only saw one as resident before the war broke out. It became the residence of the Flag Officer, Malayan Area as ‘Nelson House’ in September 1948 and then the residence of the Commander-in-Chief (C in C), Far East Station, as ‘Admiralty House’ in 1958 until the pullout of British forces in 1971.

Admiralty House become the residence of the Commander of the ANZUK Force post pullout. As part of a visit to ANZUK forces, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh had lunch at the house during a visit to Singapore in 1972.  As the official residence of the ANZUK forces commander (only two were resident), it became known as ANZUK House. Following the withdrawal of the Australian forces from the ANZUK arrangements in 1975 saw the keys to the house passed to the Singapore government.

Much has happened since the house left the service of the military. It opened as restaurant and guest house in 1978. In 1988, plans were announced to turn the building and its grounds into a country club with a caravan park. This use was however rejected and it was relaunched in mid 1989 as the Admiralty Country House. The house and its grounds would eventually play host to a country club, Yishun Country Club, in 1991. From 2001 to 2006, it became the Karimun Admiralty Country Club, during which time the building was gazetted as a National Monument (in 2002). It is slated to become part of the planned Sembawang Integrated Sports and Community Hub after FIS vacates it in 2020.

More on the history of the house can be found at: An ‘English Country manor’ in Singapore’s north once visited by the Queen.

(See also: Abodes of Singapore’s military history, The Straits Times, 6 October 2016)

Windows into the past.

The real story behind Old Changi Hospital, isn’t about what the place seems to have got an unfortunate reputation more recently for.  The former hospital, which has its roots in the RAF Hospital set up after the war in 1947, is a place that many who were warded or who worked there remember with fondness.

The hospital, with a reputation of being one of the best military medical facilities in the Far East, is also well remembered for the wonderful views its wards provided of the sea and that it was felt aided in rest and recovery.

Members of the public got to learn about the background to the hospital and how some of the basis for the more recently circulated myths are quite clearly false during a visit to the site as part of the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets series of State Property Visits organised with the support of the Singapore Land Authority. More on the visit and the series can also be found at the links below.

More on the visit:

• A compilation of photos on Facebook
• A wonderful set of sketches executed in double quick time by Pardeep Alva
• The only ghost spotted by participants 

More on Old Changi Hospital / Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets:

• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore (The Straits Times, 23 July 2017)
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets: Visit a former power station
• On Instagram
• A wander through Old Changi Hospital

Also of interest:

• The first RAF hospital in Singapore

I am reminded of the kelong from the numerous Facebook posts I have been seeing in the last half a day in which the word is used. What comes to mind is not what the word has more recently to describe – a rigged outcome, especially in referring to match-fixing in sports – but of the fishing traps constructed of wooden stakes that once decorated our shores.

What the word tends to be used to describe these days.

There were kelongs aplenty in my childhood and apparently there were even more in the days of hardship that followed the war. This is seen in a postwar map showing locations of food production facilities that also included fishing traps, where a proliferation of such traps can be seen along Singapore’s long coastline.

While it may then have seemed that kelongs – characterised by the long rows of bakau timber stakes rising above the sea surface – must have been a feature of the coastal scenery since time immemorial, the kelong was a technological import that arrived not long after the British did. Spears had apparently been the standard fishing implement that was employed prior to the introduction of the much higher yield kelongs. Munshi Abdullah, in his memoirs Hikayat Abdullah, describes the introduction of the kelong, attributed to a man from Malacca named Haji Mata-mata:

A kelong off Singapore – once a common sight.

Some eight months after the settlement had started the fishing fleet came from Malacca to fish in Singapore waters.

Most commonly caught were dorabs for they were an easy prey, never having been fished with hand-lines before in the whole history of Singapore. The fishermen used to stand out 120 -180 yards from the shore. When the Singapore people saw the Malacca fishermen making much money by hook and line fishing they also began to fish with hook-and-line like the Malacca folk. Previously they had known no method of catching fish other than by spearing them. When the Singapore settlement was a year old there came a certain Malacca man named Haji Mata-mata. He constructed large fish-traps with rows of stakes called belat and kelong. Other people built jermal.

In the first kelong which was put up, off Teluk Ayer, they caught a small number of tenggiri fish; in fact such vast surfeit that the fish could not be eaten and had to be thrown away. Their roes were taken out, put in barrels containing salt, and sold as a regular commodity to ships. The people of Singapore were surprised to see the number of fish caught in this way. The place where they built kelong was at Teluk Ayer Point, near Tanjong Malang. It became well-known.

– Munshi Abdullah in Hikayat Abdullah as translated by A H Hill

A kelong off Singapore (online at https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1322/5161998843_d5e877ded8_z.jpg).

Another one off Pulau Blakang Mati (now Sentosa) (online at https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1aMnkOWx350/UbjcRtk72kI/AAAAAAAA050/eG_Hiq9ARqk/s1600/1968%2B12%2B22%2BSingapore052.jpg).

Based on an announcement on the Novena Church Facebook page last night, the new Novena Church – after a little delay, will open on 29 July 2017 – when its first mass will be celebrated. The first novena devotion will be held on Saturday, 30 September at 8am and the first Sunday mass will be celebrated on 1 October, 8am.

More on Novena Church:

Previous posts on Novena Church:

• A glance at the old church
• The annual procession

Update 22 September 2017

Registrations have close as all available slots have been taken up as of 10.05 am. Do look out for the next visit in the series (location to be advised) on 21 October 2017.

More on the series:

• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore (Sunday Times, 23 July 2017)
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets: Visit a Power Station 
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets: Visit Kinloss House
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets: Visit Old Kallang Airport
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets: Visit Old Changi Hospital (see also: The Real Story behind Old Changi Hospital)
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets: The house on Admiral’s Hill

The sixth in the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) supported series of guided State Property visits, “Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets“, takes us to the former Beach Road Police Station.

The details of the visit are as follows:
Date : 7 October 2017
Time : 10 am to 12 noon
Address: 99 Beach Road Singapore 189701

The size of the group for the visit is limited to 30 and registrations will be required. To register, kindly fill this form in: https://goo.gl/forms/kDn5piD8NglKGH1W2

Background to the station and barracks:

The station and two barrack buildings were completed in 1934 at the tail end of a decade of reorganisation for the police force. The efforts also saw the establishment of a Police Training School at Thomson – the old Police Academy, as well as the construction of new stations and living quarters across Singapore, in the face of a relative state of disorder that had prompted comparisons between the “cesspool of iniquity” that was Singapore, a.k.a. Sin-galore, and Chicago and Clapham Junction.

The complex was a replacement for an earlier station, which had been located further east along Beach Road at Clyde Terrace and was built at a cost of $319,743. The barracks provided quarters for 64 married man in one of its three storey blocks. 80 single men and NCOs were also accommodated in another three storey singlemen’s block in which a mess and recreation room was also arranged on the ground floor. The three storey main station building, described at the point of its construction as being of a “pretentious type”, also had quarters  – for two European and two “Asiatic” Inspectors – on its second and third levels. Its ground floor contained offices, a guard room, an armoury and a number of stores. A cell block – the lock-up – was also arranged “behind the guardroom”, “approached from it by a covered way”.

The station would play a part in a series of tumultuous events that followed its completion. A hundred or so Japanese “aliens” were held in it at the outbreak of war on 8 December, before they were moved to Changi Prison. This was a scene would repeat itself after Singapore’s fall. The station was used as a holding facility for different ethnic groups of civilians including Jews, individuals of various European backgrounds and nationalities, and also members of the Chinese and Indian community, before internment in Changi.

Beach Road Police Station also found itself in the thick of action during the Maria Hertogh riots in 1950, when policemen from the station were sent to quell disturbances in nearby Kampong Glam – only to have the men involved retreat into the station, along with scores of civilians, for safety.

The station served as the Police ‘C’ Division headquarters until May 1988, when that moved into new premises at Geylang Police Station on Paya Lebar Road. The Central Police Division headquarters moved in to the station in November 1992 and used it until 2001 when that moved into the newly completed Cantonment Police Complex. The decommissioned former station was also used by the Raffles Design Institute for some six years. Two sets of quarters, added on an adjoining piece of land – two four storey blocks in the 1950s and a 12 storey block in 1970 – have since been demolished.

The station complex sits on a 2 hectare reserve site that is now the subject of a Government land sales tender exercise and as the successful developer will have the option of demolishing the two barrack blocks as part of the redevelopment, this may be a last opportunity to see the complex as it is. The main station building itself has been conserved since 2002 and will be retained.

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of the fall of Singapore, which the National Museum of Singapore is commemorating with an international exhibition Witness to War: Remembering 1942. The exhibition, which opens tomorrow, revisits the unfortunate period in Singapore’s history through artefacts that have not been seen on our shores since the war, as well as new takes on the darkest of days through previously untold stories of survivors. To add to that, artefacts from our own National Collection, including a recently acquired 25-Pounder Field Gun used by British and Commonwealth armies in World War Two, as well as never displayed before Japanese Army bugle, an Enfield No. 2 Mk. 1 revolver and personal artefacts of the war survivors, make their appearance. The exhibition is centred on the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 and its immediate aftermath with a section that also explores the lead up to the fall.

The recently acquired 25-Pounder Field Gun.

What is possibly one of the highlights will be a ceremonial sword that belonged to General Tomoyuki Yamashita. This, on display in its sheath, is on public display outside the United States for the first time since the war ended in 1945. The sword, the blade of which was made by a famed swordsmith, Fujiwara Kanenaga, sometime between 1640 and 1680, was surrendered to the Americans on 2 September 1945 in Luzon, Philippines and was given to the United States Military Academy at West Point. This will be the first time that the sword is being displayed outside the United States since it got there in 1945.

Yamashita’s ceremonial samurai sword.

What makes the exhibition worth the visit isn’t just the numerous artefacts but also the never heard before accounts, the collection of which rather interestingly involved school children, from war survivors and veterans. Speaking of the kids, there is a special family activity space, entitled “A Child’s Perspective”, that will appeal to the young ones – the interactive activity space includes a mock-up of a bomb-shelter which will allow the young ones a feel of what it may have been like.

School children were involved in the process of collecting previously untold stories of survivors.

Witness to War: Remembering 1942 is open to public from 23 September 2017 to 25 March 2018, and is chronicled on social media via the hashtag #remembering1942. More information on the exhibition and events related to it can be found at http://www.nationalmuseum.sg.

Poster of Hong Kong entrepreneur Ho Kom-Tong (Bruce Lee’s maternal grandfather) performing at a Hong Kong St. John Ambulance charity show Drunk Overlord in the Pavilion of a Hundred Flowers, 18 January 1941 (on loan from Hong Kong Museum of History, Leisure and Cultural Services Department).

The portrait of Sir Shenton Whitelegge Thomas painted by artist Xu Beihong, which was previously displayed in the Singapore History Gallery, makes its return in Witness to War after a period of conservation.

Artefacts from the pre-war Japanese community, who were centred on Chuo-Dori or Middle Road.

A family from the pre-war Japanese community, who were centred on Chuo-Dori or Middle Road.

Personal belongings of victims of war.

A Japanese bugle from the National Collection.

A Union Jack captured by Japanese troops marked with the date of the fall.

Changi Prison key.

Inside the mock-up of the bomb shelter.

The mock-up.

A mock-up of a kitchen.

Contributors of some of the stories.

The long awaited reopening of Novena Church, after a three-year closure for the its impressive new church building, was greeted by a crowd of several thousands worshippers at its first mass celebrated at 6.30 pm yesterday. A queue to enter the church had formed some three hours before the church was due to open its at 4.30 pm and by 4.45 pm, the 1,500 seat capacity church was already filled.

A glimpse at the insides of the new church.

The celebration of the first mass at the church comes just over three years since the last mass was celebrated in the old church on 28 September 2014. The old church was closed from October of that year with masses held at SJI Junior and Novena services held at the Church of the Risen Christ in Toa Payoh in the interim. The popular Novena services, which have long coloured Saturdays along the stretch of Thomson Road at which the church is located, resumes today with and its first Sunday masses will be held tomorrow.

Mass and Novena Service Times

Photographs from the first mass

A first glimpse of the new next to the old.

Stairway to heaven.

The 1500 seat capacity new church building was filled in a matter of minutes.

And within 15 minutes of opening, the old section of the church was also filled.

A section of the crowd.

Stained glass windows.

The new church’s first mass, dedicated to the Archangels, begins at 6.30 pm.

The first sermon.

The choir.

The crowd waiting to get in to see the new church.

With Singapore’s tropical climate and balmy waters, an affinity for swimming as a recreational activity would be expected. It wasn’t however until the arrival of the first swimming pool, a century into modern Singapore’s founding, that the pursuit’s appeal among the masses really took off.

Singapore Swimming Club’s sea ‘diving stage’ in the early 1900s (National Archives Online).

The Chinese Swimming Club’s Bathing Pagar.

Recreational swimming had very much been the domain of the colonial elite, and the handful of well-off non-Europeans through much of modern Singapore’s first century. Several seaside villas featured private bathing pagars – swimming enclosures that extended out from the shore. Clubs were also organised to promote the activity, the first of which was the very exclusive Singapore Swimming Club set up in the 1890s. Its members, limited to those from the European expatriate community, plunged into the sea from a disused jetty at Tanjong Rhu before the club built a pagar in the 1900s. The wealthy non-Europeans also established clubs of their own such as the 1905 Chinese Swimming Club.

The (public) Bathing Pagar at Katong Park – built at the same time as Mount Emily Swimming Pool as part of a 1920s to 1930s drive to built sporting facilities for public use (from a set of slides obtained from Mr Kim Hocker).

With neither the luxury of time nor the means to travel, the working class population contended themselves to the occasional dip in the less sanitary waters closer to their places of abode. It would not be until the opening of the first municipal swimming pool, at Mount Emily in 1931, that swimming’s reach extended to the masses.

An early timetable for Mount Emily Swimming Pool (c. 1930s).

Mount Emily was not Singapore’s first pool. The Y.M.C.A. opened one in a disused salt water tank on Fort Canning Hill in 1919. While this pool may have introduced the sport to a selection of school children, it was out of reach to much of the urban population.

The 1919 YMCA Swimming Pool at Fort Canning.

Mount Emily’s opening came on the back of a boom in the establishment of public sporting facilities, which started in the 1920s. The growing municipality, whose population had exceeded 600,000, was in need of such spaces. There was a growing awareness of the benefits “wholesome sport” to the health and well-being of the working classes and this provided the Municipal Commissioners with the impetus to make the provision of playing spaces a priority.

The drive to build sporting facilities also saw the former Race Course transformed into the Farrer Park Playing Fields in the mid-1930s, which was touted as a “new lung for the city” (photo: National Archives Online).

Set in an elevated exclusive neighbourhood that provided some of the best views of the town, Mount Emily Swimming Pool’s location may have seemed odd. A ready made excavation – in the form of a decommissioned service reservoir’s tank – must have the deciding factor. One of the reservoir’s two tanks was turned into the pool, which given deep main section and a shallow children’s sub-section.

A G R Lambert photograph of the reservoir on top of Mount Emily taken from Osborne House. Mount Emily’s elevation and its rather flat and elongated top made it a perfect for the placement of the service reservoir, which was put there in the late 1870s. This supplied treated water to the municipality until it was made redundant by the much larger Fort Canning Reservoir in 1929.

It was with the children that the pool proved to be a hit. This was due in part to periods during which school children were provided with free entry. This brought about many positive outcomes. It not only provided a much needed outlet for the expansion of youthful energy, it also kept children from mischief. There would however be the nuisance that would be caused by overcrowding – due to the pool’s popularity – combined with the over-exuberance of many of the schoolboys. Secret society members were also known to frequent the pool, often harassing swimmers. The pool would prove especially popular after the war. Its reopening, in December 1949 following an 18 month closure during a polio epidemic, drew such an unruly crowd that the police had to be called in.

Mount Emily Swimming Pool was in use until the early 1980s. It was where Singapore’s very first woman lifeguard, Miss Ann Tay, passed her test in February 1952.

The public would have to wait until 1952 for its second pool, which was at Yan Kit Road. Farrer Park in 1957 and River Valley in 1959 would add to the list of pools. Yan Kit was especially popular, having been set up in a highly populated area, requiring a two hour limit had to be imposed on pool users soon after it opened.

Yan Kit, Singapore’s second public pool (National Archives Online).

Swimming’s popularity would increase further in the 1960s, when schemes that were introduced to promote swimming. With Independence, the promotion of sports became a National priority. Sports, seen as a means to build self-discipline and a healthy and “rugged society”, was to serve as a foundation for a disciplined workforce. The promotion of swimming, a sport that lent itself as a social unifier, was put high on that agenda. This and the success of Singapore swimmers at regional competitions, led to increased in pool usage. Admissions grew to some 987,000 annually by 1969.

River Valley Swimming Pool.

The 1970s would see swimming pools being built further away. Much of the population was being moved into newly built public housing estates and satellite towns to which amenities to promote healthy and gracious living were added. The first suburban pools were at Queenstown and Jurong, which came up in 1970. The hosting of the SEAP Games in 1973 and the continued success of local swimmers led to a growing belief that the sport was one Singapore could excel in and many more would take it up. By 1975, attendance at public swimming pools topped 3.5 million.

Buona Vista Swimming Pool (1976), which closed in 2014. I took a very eventful Bronze Medallion Life Saving test here in 1983.

In spite of the proliferation of pools with more clubs and condominiums being built, public pools continue to serve an important social function. Singapore has a total of 25 public pools today. These provide the population not only with a place for physical activity and social interaction; the social use of pools has been extended through the use of unique designs as a means to provide the neighbourhoods they are being built in with a statement of identity.

Please note that registration for the event is closed as all spaces made available have been taken up.

The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has kindly granted permission for a series of guided State Property visits, “Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets”, the seventh of which will be to the former View Road Lodge – best known perhaps for its time as the View Road (Mental) Hospital.

View Road Lodge in January 2011.

As a branch of Woodbridge Hospital (now the Institute of Mental Health) that operated from 1975 to 2001, View Road Hospital was used to house and treat recovering patients from Woodbridge. Many of View Road’s patients were in fact well enough to find work in day jobs outside of the hospital, which also operated a laundry, a cafe and a day-care centre with patients’ help.

Thought to have been completed just prior to the outbreak of war in late 1941, it is also known that the building was put to use as accommodation for Asian policemen (with the Naval Base Police Force) and their families from the end of the 1950s to around 1972. During this time, the Gurdwara Sabha Naval Police – a Sikh temple, operated on the grounds. As View Road Lodge, the building was re-purposed on two occasions as a foreign workers dormitory.

The visit will also include a rare opportunity to have a look at an above ground bomb-shelter that had been constructed as part of the complex in 1941.

Rimau “Bomb-Proof” Office, 1941 (National Archives UK).

The details of the visit are as follows:

Date : 21 October 2017
Time : 10 am to 12 noon
Address: 10 View Road Singapore 757918

Participants should be of age 18 and above.

Kindly register only if you are able to make the visit by filling the form in below.

Registrations will close when the event limit of 30 registrants has been reached or on 14 October 2017 at 2359 hours, whichever comes first.

More on the property : Rooms with more than a view

Further information on the series / highlights of selected visits:

• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore (Sunday Times, 23 July 2017)
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets (LAND – SLA Newsletter, September 2017)
• Old Changi Hospital Visit on 9 September 2017
• Former Beach Road Police Station visit on 7 October 2017

Registration is closed as all spaces have been taken up as of 3.15 pm, 21 October 2017.

Visit #8 – the last of the Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets series of State Property Visits, which the Singapore Land Authority is supporting, takes participants to Adam Park. A quiet estate of 1920s vintage with its cluster of Black and White houses, Adam Park was the scene of some of the last battles fought in the lead up to the Fall of Singapore in February 1942. It was also where a POW camp was established in the early part of the occupation when the Japanese moved POWs to the area for the construction of the Syonan Jinja at nearby MacRitchie Reservoir from March 1942 to January 1943.

The visit presents a rare opportunity to visit five of the Black and White Property, including no. 11 at which a chapel was established by the POWs. (do note that the wall on which the remnant of the mural mention has been concealed by a panel for its protection, so that cannot be seen).

The details of the visit are as follows:

Date : 4 November 2017
Time : 10 to 11.45 am
Address: 7 Adam Park Singapore 289926 (Registration / Meeting Point)

Participants should be of age 18 and above.

Kindly register only if you are able to make the visit by filling the form in below.

Registrations will close when the event limit of 60 registrants has been reached or on 28 October 2017 at 2359 hours, whichever comes first.

Further information on the series / highlights of selected visits:

• Guided tours of best kept secrets in S’pore (Sunday Times, 23 July 2017)
• Discovering Singapore’s Best Kept Secrets (LAND – SLA Newsletter, September 2017)
• Old Changi Hospital Visit on 9 September 2017
• Former View Road Hospital Visit on 21 October 2017
• Former Beach Road Police Station visit on 7 October 2017

Notices in the back pages of the press can sometimes bring joy.

An notice that gave me a sense of happiness appeared in today’s edition of the Straits Times, which contained a list of proposed amendments to the Master Plan being made by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). One is the re-designation of part of a certain Lot 05052P, Mukim 17 at Serangoon Road as a Conservation Area, which OneMap identifies as the site of the former National Aerated Water Company’s bottling plant. The possibility of its conservation was actually discussed a year back after the site was purchased by property developer Selangor Dredging. The developer intends to redevelop the site for residential use, which interestingly appears as the “Jui Residences” – a play I suppose on the Hokkien word for water Jui or 水, on OneMap. What is now left to be seen is how much of the former factory can be retained.*

More on the plant, the social memories connected with it, and its history can be found in this post: Losing its fizz: the third milestone without the former National Aerated Water plant.

The notice on page C16 of today’s Straits Times and the lot as identified on OneMap.

The former National Aerated Water plant by the Kallang River.

*A press release issued by the URA indicates that the conservation will be of the two-storey L-shaped main building facing Serangoon Road. Part of the conserved building (I suppose the corner where the road access now is) will however have to be demolished and reconstructed to allow vehicular access to the rear of the site.

The corner of the building that would have to be reconstructed.

More photos previously taken of the plant

(see also: https://thelongnwindingroad.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/losing-its-fizz-the-third-milestone-without-the-former-national-aerated-water-plant/):

The photographs of the site of the former National Aerated Water Co. used in this post were taken during a private visit organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) for invited guests and have been used with the kind permission of the site’s current owner. Do note that the site is not opened to the public.

Disused spaces bring great joy, even as in the case of the former National Aerated Water Co’s bottling plant at 3MS Serangoon Road, the paraphernalia associated its use has long been removed. There is much to learn from the spaces, especially those that were conceived with little in way of frills in an age of greater simplicity. The disused plant, fronted by an art-deco-esque tw0-strorey structure placed along a thoroughfare that would have been hard to miss, last saw use some two decades ago. Associated with the bottling of two popular soft-drink labels, Sinalco and the joy in a green bottle that was the comic strip inspired Kickapoo Joy Juice,  there are many now who look back fondly at the now empty building that is one of few constants in an area that has seen much change.

The art-deco front of the former factory is a rare constant in an area that has seen much change.

The good news we heard just last week was that a portion of the former plant – its front – is being conserved. Selangor Dredging purchased the site for residential redevelopment just last year and has over the year been working with the URA on the conservation of the former plant’s most recognisable feature and its face – the art-deco main building.

The disused factory offers us a window into the past.

The factory, of a 1954 vintage, last saw operations some two decades ago. Built at a time of increasing demand for soft drinks, the home-grown company’s new plant found immediate success. The investment in the state-of-the-art factory and bottling equipment on the company’s 25th Anniversary was motivated by Sinalco’s 1952 award of exclusive bottling and distribution rights. An interesting nugget of information was shared by the URA about the rather peculiar name of the German drink was that it was derived from the words “sine alcohol” or without (in Latin) alcohol. More on the plant and the company can be found in a previous post: Losing its fizz: the third milestone without the former National Aerated Water plant.

Writings on the wall: soft drinks bottled at the plant … plus a secret formula perhaps.

The L-shaped building being conserved was where the company was run from. Offices and a mixing room were located on the upper floor and a reception, the storage area and distribution spaces on the lower level. The conserved building has several interesting features. These include a purpose designed “signage tower” on which the Sinalco logo was emblazoned, a tapering balcony at the front with a fair-faced brick parapet facing the road on which the company’s name is mounted, and a built-in sun shade projecting out from the building’s side that spirals out of a circular window (see: Conserved features of the building at “Former National Aerated Water Factory building to be gazetted for conservation” identified by URA). Parts of the building will have to be rebuilt. This includes the southeast corner, which will have to be knocked-down to permit vehicular entry to the site for construction.

A sun shade or concrete, spiraling out of a circular window.

The signage tower.

Office space on the upper floor.

Redevelopment will take place on the site just to the rear of the conserved building and this will see several structures removed, including the wide-span steel truss supported roof structure under which the main shopfloor of the plant was sited. This roof construction, topped with corrugated roofing sheets, has ample window covered openings built in to it to maxmise the entry of light and ventilation. An auxiliary building, that would have contained service spaces including toilets that can still be seen, can be found close to the rear perimeter of the site.

The shopfloor and the roof structure through which light into the factory was maximised.

The building at the rear of the site.

A look around …

A last reflection. The reception area at the southeast side of the building.

The fair-faced brick parapet.

Windows from the past into the present.

The main staircase.

The tapered front facing balcony.

The rear of the office space – which overlooked the shopfloor. Part of the roof structure can be seen.

Timber doors and matching ventilation grilles above are seen on the outward facing boundaries of the main building.

A view from the former shopfloor towards the main building. The right portion of the building was where crates of soft drinks were stored and dispatched.

The southwest side of the building.

The part of the building that will be reconstructed.

The office space on the upper floor.

The mixing room.

Joyful switches.

A view out the back of the office space towards the roof and the shopfloor below.

A close-up of the corrugated roofing sheets.

Frosted or textured glass is in evidence throughout to filter light that would otherwise have been too harsh.

Close-up of a textured glass panel.

Up on the roof.

A view over the top.

Textured glass windows.

A ventilation house?

Dead slow ahead. The part of the factory that will be demolished as seen from the driveway.

The pump at the driveway, which is visible from the outside.

Comfort facilities at the rear.

An early Christmas present – the wonderful combination of colours that painted this morning’s sky, taken at 6.47 am from the Beaulieu Jetty at Sembawang Park. The view is of the Tebrau Strait towards Pasir Gudang in Johor on the left of the photograph and the former Kampong Wak Hassan on the right – where the silhouettes of two tower cranes can be seen. The area of the former seaside kampung is where luxury homes are currently being built.

Colours of the morning, 23 Dec 2017, 6.47 am.

The eve of the Hindu festival of Thaipusam sees the Chetty Pusam Silver Chariot procession take place.  The procession is in two parts. The first leg, which takes place in the early morning, sees Lord Murugan (also Sri Thendayuthapani) brought from the Sri Thendayuthapani Temple at Tank Road to the Sri Layan Sithi Vinayagar Temple at Keong Saik Road to spend the day with his brother Ganesh (Sri Vinayagar). A stop is made along this leg at the Sri Mariamman Temple, which is dedicated to Lord Murugan’s and Lord Vinayagar’s mother, Sri Mariamman or Parvati.

The Chariot bearing Lord Murugan makes a stop at the Sri Mariamman Temple along South Bridge Road,

A second part leaves the Sri Layan Sithi Vinayagar Temple in the afternoon and makes its way back to the Sri Thendayuthapani Temple. Due to the early start of the main Thaipusam kavadi procession (brought about by a lunar eclipse occurring just after sundown on Thaipusam), the chariot is scheduled to leave at about 2.30 pm this afternoon. A procession of Chettiar kavadis will also leave the temple for Tank Road at about 1.30 pm.

Photographs taken of the Silver Chariot procession this morning:

Posts related to past celebrations of Thaipusam in Singapore:

• Vel, Vel, Vadivel: Thaipusam in Singapore (2010)
• Sights Sans Sounds of Thaipusam in Singapore (2011)
• Thaipusam at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Templ (2012)
• An Annual Walk of Faith (2013)
• Faces of Thaipusam 2014 (2014)
• What colours the full moon of Thai (2015)
• The full moon of Thai
• The Thaipusam Chariot Procession
• Photographs of Thaipusam 2017

Thaipusam at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal in photographs:

Posts related to past celebrations of Thaipusam in Singapore:

• Vel, Vel, Vadivel: Thaipusam in Singapore (2010)
• Sights Sans Sounds of Thaipusam in Singapore (2011)
• Thaipusam at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple (2012)
• An Annual Walk of Faith (2013)
• Faces of Thaipusam 2014 (2014)
• What colours the full moon of Thai (2015)
• The full moon of Thai (2016)
• The Thaipusam Chariot Procession (2017)
• Photographs of Thaipusam 2017
• The Silver Chariot through the streets of Chinatown (2018)

The Malay Film Productions (MFP) at Jalan Ampas was one of a pair of production houses that entertained a generation of Singaporeans and Malayans. Established by the Shaw Brothers’, the MFP is especially well known. It was where the legendary P. Ramlee made his name, excelling not just as an actor but also as a singer, songwriter and director. Lending his range of talents were to a series of films, his popularity has endured to this day, more than four decades after his sudden and premature passing in 1973.

Main gate to No. 8 Jalan Ampas.

The recent run of State of Motion 2018: Sejarah-ku, organised by the Asian Film Archive, renewed a consciousness for Jalan Ampas. P. Ramlee’s career there coincided with the golden age of Malay cinema – a time when the production of Malay movies was at its most prolific. Besides the screening of films of the genre, a guided tour also plotted a return to the MFP, albeit to its closed gates beyond which the buildings of the former studios stand quite forgotten. The tour, one of two – the other an offshore tour – with which locations where outdoor scenes in several MFP productions were visited, permitted a recall not only of the scenes, but of a Singapore forgotten if not for the movies. Site specific art installations were also presented at the sites, expressing the memories that also lay embedded in the locations .

Participants listening to CLOSURE / TUTUP by Wu Jun Han outside the gates of No. 8 Jalan Ampas.

Standing outside gates at Jalan Ampas, I found myself transported to the confrontational scenes that were enacted at that very gateway by Wu Jun Han’s recording, Tutup or Closure. The scenes, captured in the movie Mogok (Strike), although set in the Eveready  factory, were actually inspired by a strike that took place at the studios that same year involving 120 MFP employees.  The spot was also a location for another movie, the hit comedy Seniman Bujang Lapok,  which P. Ramlee directed and played a leading role in. This inspired a second installation along Jalan Ampas, Izzad Radzali Shah’s Wayang Terbiar (The Theatre that was Left Behind). A diorama of a mini threatre with scenes from the movie depicted, it seems almost altar-like in appearance.

Wayang Terbiar.

I was particularly drawn to Mintio’s Penghibur Hati-Lara (Solace for the Heart) installed just off Tanah Merah Besar Road. The work takes its title from a line in a lullaby “Kau penghibur hati-lara” (you are solace for my painful heart) sung in the film Darah Muda by the female protagonist to her baby in the seaside setting provided by the promenade at the end of Tanah Merah Besar Road. Anticipating separation, the line also suggests a sense of yearning that the artist also intends to evoke with her piece and its location between Changi Prison and the Airport – both sites of separation. The seaside promenade is now buried under a Changi Airport runway. Having been part of an area in which some of my most treasured memories of childhood were made, the artwork also evoked a sense of great longing and of loss in me.

Penghibur Hati-Lara at Tanah Merah Besar.

The former Kangkar Fishing Port, the location for scenes in the 1958 movie Sri Menanti, also provided a setting for Boedi Widjaja’s Path. 9, ))) ) ) )). The artwork, separated from the audience by the Serangoon River is bridged by the sounds of the flute, exploring the divide that the main characters in Sri Menanti faced in their attempts to bridge a cross-religious and cross-cultural gap in finding romance.

Once where a scene of Kangkar’s fishing colourful fishing fleet would have greeted the eye.

The mainland tour’s two other sites were at seaside (or former seaside) locations. At Punggol, the sea provided a backdrop for the scenes from Isi Neraka (Sinners to Hell) that inspired Salleh Japar’s Sulh-I-Kull (Universal Tolerance). The Shaws’ former seaside villa was used as a symbol of the individualism brought about by materialism and wealth in P. Ramlee’s Ibu Mertua Ku. P. Ramlee’s character in the movie violently blinds himself after he realises the circumstances in which he regained his sight after a previous spell of blindness. It is this loss of sight that the site’s installation, Tan Peiling’s 0.25 Seconds before an Image is Void, provides a response to.

The former seaside villa of the Shaws at which Liz Taylor was hosted on her visits here.

I was also able to join the offshore tour, which included a visit to Pulau Ubin – off which Pulau Sekudu or Frog Island lies. The rocky islet, a popular spot once for photo shoots, served as locations for Hang Tuah (1956) and Hang Jebat (1961). A central theme in the two movies is loyalty, betrayal and feudal authority. That is played out in the final fight scenes that both movies feature, which pitted 15th century pair of warriors – one-time close companions. The questions of the loyalty, betrayal, brotherly love, rage and desire expressed during the fight are what Akulah Bimbo Sakti’s Cinta Tuah Jebat examines. The artwork, a live performance accompanied by a recorded audio playback takes place on a beach on Ubin and within sight of Sekudu. More on State of Motion 2018: Sejarah-ku, which runs until 11 February 2018 can be found at https://stateofmotion.sg/2018/.

Pulau Sekudu, where the final fight scene in Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat was filmed.

Cinta Tuah Jebat (The Love of Tuah and Jebat).

In photographs: the start of the colourful procession of Chettiar kavidis from the Sri Layan Sithi Vinayagar Temple on Keong Saik Road to the Sri Thendayuthapani Temple at Tank Road. The procession, along with a Silver Chariot procession, is held every year as part of Chetty Pusam on the eve of the Hindu festival of Thaipusam.

Thaipusam in Singapore:

• Vel, Vel, Vadivel: Thaipusam in Singapore (2010)
• Sights Sans Sounds of Thaipusam in Singapore (2011)
• Thaipusam at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple (2012)
• An Annual Walk of Faith (2013)
• Faces of Thaipusam 2014 (2014)
• What colours the full moon of Thai (2015)
• The full moon of Thai (2016)
• The Thaipusam Chariot Procession (2017)
• Photographs of Thaipusam 2017
• The Silver Chariot through the streets of Chinatown (2018)
• Photographs of Thaipusam Preparations at the Sri Srinivasa Perunal Temple (2018)

What’s become of the “conserved” former Khong Guan Biscuit Factory at MacTaggart Road since my last post on it (see: The fallen star of MacTaggart Road) in September 2016:

The former factory – which also served as a warehouse for flour and a residence for the family that owns it, has seen a refreshing transformation with the addition of an eight-storey industrial building behind its distinctive three-storey conserved façade. The design of the quite un-industrial looking new extension seems to have been undertaken by Meta Studio (see: http://meta-current.strikingly.com/#khong-guan-flour-milling-ltd and https://www.facebook.com/meta.architecture/posts/777289939043015).

Photographs of the building before the addition of the new extension:

https://www.facebook.com/thelongnwindingroad/posts/2045557402136053